Adaptive Cross Image Filters for Underwater Image Enhancement
Huimin Lu, Yujie Li, Shiyuan Yang, Seiichi Serikawa · 2013
This paper describes a novel method to enhance images by adaptive cross image filters. Scattering and color change are two major problems of distortion for imaging, especially in underwater environment. Scattering is caused by large suspended particles, like fog or turbid water. Color change corresponds to the varying degrees of attenuation encountered by light traveling in the water with different wavelengths, rendering ambient underwater environments dominated by a bluish tone. Our key contribution is to propose a self-referenced image enhancement algorithm, to compensate the attenuation discrepancy along the propagation path, and to take the influence of the possible presence of an artificial lighting source into consideration. A simple colorization method is also utilized for restoring color balance. We demonstrated that the enhanced images are characterized by reduced noised level, better exposedness of the dark regions, improved global contrast while the finest details and edges are enhance significantly. In addition, our enhancement method is comparable to higher quality than the state of the art methods.