Single underwater image enhancement based on color cast removal and visibility restoration

Chongyi Li; Jichang Guo; Bo Wang; Runmin Cong; Yan Zhang; Jian Wang

doi:10.1117/1.JEI.25.3.033012

9 June 2016 Single underwater image enhancement based on color cast removal and visibility restoration

Chongyi Li, Jichang Guo, Bo Wang, Runmin Cong, Yan Zhang, Jian Wang

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Electronic Imaging, Vol. 25, Issue 3, 033012 (June 2016). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JEI.25.3.033012

Abstract

Images taken under underwater condition usually have color cast and serious loss of contrast and visibility. Degraded underwater images are inconvenient for observation and analysis. In order to address these problems, an underwater image-enhancement method is proposed. A simple yet effective underwater image color cast removal algorithm is first presented based on the optimization theory. Then, based on the minimum information loss principle and inherent relationship of medium transmission maps of three color channels in an underwater image, an effective visibility restoration algorithm is proposed to recover visibility, contrast, and natural appearance of degraded underwater images. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, qualitative comparison, quantitative comparison, and color accuracy test are conducted. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively remove color cast, improve contrast and visibility, and recover natural appearance of degraded underwater images. Additionally, the proposed method is comparable to and even better than several state-of-the-art methods.

Citation Download Citation

Chongyi Li, Jichang Guo, Bo Wang, Runmin Cong, Yan Zhang, and Jian Wang "Single underwater image enhancement based on color cast removal and visibility restoration," Journal of Electronic Imaging 25(3), 033012 (9 June 2016). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JEI.25.3.033012

Published: 9 June 2016

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