Underwater image enhancement algorithm based on CLAHE and USM
Lintao Zheng, Hengliang Shi, Shibao Sun · 2016
Over the last few decades underwater image processing has received considerable attention due to its challenging nature and its importance. The quality of underwater images is worse than that of images shot in the air and images usually appear foggy and hazy. In this paper a novel algorithm is proposed for underwater image enhancement. Our algorithm is based on a single degraded underwater image, which does not require specialized hardware and any knowledge about the underwater conditions. Our algorithm comprises a combination of classical contrast enhancement techniques and adaptive histogram equalization techniques. We present an evaluation of the proposed algorithm and other approaches on real underwater images. Comprehensive validation experiments performed on real underwater images reveal that the proposed method performs better than the current state-of-the-art.