Underwater image enhancement and restoration based on local fusion

Abstract

Underwater imaging and image processing play important roles in oceanic scientific research. However, because the light is absorbed and scattered, the obtained underwater images are seriously degraded. Color distortion, low contrast, and detail (edge information) loss are the major problems of underwater images. We propose a method to solve these problems. First, a local adaptive proportion fusion algorithm is proposed to produce a color-balanced image, which is the first input image. Second, an edge-enhanced image is produced as the second input image. Third, a proportion fusion image is produced as the third input image. Finally, the image formation model-based local triple fusion method is used to merge these three input images and get the final result. Experimental results show that the proposed method could effectively balance color distortion and enhance edges of the degraded images. Subjective and objective evaluations show that our method is superior to many state-of-the-art methods.