A Novel Multi-Stream Fusion Network for Underwater Image Enhancement

Due to the selective absorption of light and the existence of a large number of floating media in sea water, underwater images often suffer from color casts and detail blurs. It is therefore necessary to perform color correction and detail restoration. However,the existing enhancement algorithms cannot achieve the desired results. In order to solve the above problems, this paper proposes a multi-stream feature fusion network. First, an underwater image is preprocessed to obtain potential information from the illumination stream, color stream and structure stream by histogram equalization with contrast limitation, gamma correction and white balance, respectively. Next, these three streams and the original raw stream are sent to the residual blocks to extract the features. The features will be subsequently fused. It can enhance feature representation in underwater images. In the meantime, a composite loss function including three terms is used to ensure the quality of the enhanced image from the three aspects of color balance, structure preservation and image smoothness. Therefore, the enhanced image is more in line with human visual perception.Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by comparison experiments with many stateof-the-art underwater image enhancement algorithms. Experimental results show that the proposed method provides superior results over them in terms of MSE,PSNR, SSIM, UIQM and UCIQE, and the enhanced images are more similar to their ground truth images.

Unsupervised Multi-Expert Learning Model for Underwater Image Enhancement

Underwater image enhancement aims to restore a clean appearance and thus improves the quality of underwater degraded images.Current methods feed the whole image directly into the model for enhancement.However,they ignored that the R,G and B channels of underwater degraded images present varied degrees of degradation,due to the selective absorption for the light.To address this issue,we propose an unsupervised multi-expert learning model by considering the enhancement of each color channel.Specifically,an unsupervised architecture based on generative adversarial network is employed to alleviate the need for paired underwater images.Based on this,we design a generator,including a multi-expert encoder,a feature fusion module and a feature fusion-guided decoder,to generate the clear underwater image.Accordingly,a multi-expert discriminator is proposed to verify the authenticity of the R,G and B channels,respectively.In addition,content perceptual loss and edge loss are introduced into the loss function to further improve the content and details of the enhanced images.Extensive experiments on public datasets demonstrate that our method achieves more pleasing results in vision quality.Various metrics(PSNR,SSIM,UIQM and UCIQE) evaluated on our enhanced images have been improved obviously.

Underwater Image Classification Based on EfficientnetB0 and Two-Hidden-Layer Random Vector Functional Link

The ocean plays an important role in maintaining the equilibrium of Earth’s ecology and providing humans access to a wealth of resources.To obtain a high-precision underwater image classification model,we propose a classification model that combines an EfficientnetB0 neural network and a two-hidden-layer random vector functional link network(EfficientnetB0-TRVFL).The features of underwater images were extracted using the EfficientnetB0 neural network pretrained via ImageNet,and a new fully connected layer was trained on the underwater image dataset using the transfer learning method.Transfer learning ensures the initial performance of the network and helps in the development of a high-precision classification model.Subsequently,a TRVFL was proposed to improve the classification property of the model.Net construction of the two hidden layers exhibited a high accuracy when the same hidden layer nodes were used.The parameters of the second hidden layer were obtained using a novel calculation method,which reduced the outcome error to improve the performance instability caused by the random generation of parameters of RVFL.Finally,the TRVFL classifier was used to classify features and obtain classification results.The proposed EfficientnetB0-TRVFL classification model achieved 87.28%,74.06%,and 99.59%accuracy on the MLC2008,MLC2009,and Fish-gres datasets,respectively.The best convolutional neural networks and existing methods were stacked up through box plots and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests,respectively.The increases imply improved systematization properties in underwater image classification tasks.The image classification model offers important performance advantages and better stability compared with existing methods.

Bioinspired Polarized Optical Flow Enables Turbid Underwater Target Motion Estimation

Underwater target motion estimation is a challenge for ocean military and scientific research.In this work,we propose a method based on the combination of polarization imaging and optical flow for turbid underwater target detection.Polarization imaging can reduce the influence of backscattered light and obtain high-quality images underwater.The optical flow shows the motion and structural information of the target.We use polarized optical flow to obtain the optical flow field and estimate the target motion.The experimental results of different targets under varying water turbidity levels illustrate that our method is realizable and robust.The precision is verified by comparing the results with the precise displacement data and calculating two error measures.The proposed method based on polarized optical flow can obtain accurate displacement information and a good recognition effect.Moving target segmentation based on the Otsu method further proves the superiority of the polarized optical flow under turbid water.This study is valuable for target detection and motion estimation in scattering environments.

Underwater Image Enhancement Based on IMSRCR and CLAHE-WGIF

Aiming at the scattering and absorption of light in the water body,which causes the problems of color shift,uneven brightness,poor sharpness and missing details in the acquired underwater images,an underwater image enhancement algorithm based on IMSRCR and CLAHE-WGIF is proposed.Firstly,the IMSRCR algorithm proposed in this paper is used to process the original underwater image with adaptive color shift correction;secondly,the image is converted to HSV color space,and the segmentation exponential algorithm is used to process the S component to enhance the image saturation;finally,multi-scale Retinex is used to decompose the V component image into detail layer and base layer,and adaptive two-dimensional gamma correction is made to the base layer to adjust the brightness unevenness,while the detail layer is processed by CLAHE-WGIF algorithm to enhance the image contrast and detail information.The experimental results show that our algorithm has some advantages over existing algorithms in both subjective and objective evaluations,and the information entropy of the image is improved by 6.3%on average,and the UIQM and UCIQE indexes are improved by 12.9%and 20.3%on average.

Visual Enhancement of Underwater Images Using Transmission Estimation and Multi-Scale Fusion

The demand for the exploration of ocean resources is increasing exponentially.Underwater image data plays a significant role in many research areas.Despite this,the visual quality of underwater images is degraded because of two main factors namely,backscattering and attenuation.Therefore,visual enhancement has become an essential process to recover the required data from the images.Many algorithms had been proposed in a decade for improving the quality of images.This paper aims to propose a single image enhancement technique without the use of any external datasets.For that,the degraded images are subjected to two main processes namely,color correction and image fusion.Initially,veiling light and transmission light is estimated tofind the color required for correction.Veiling light refers to unwanted light,whereas transmission light refers to the required light for color correction.These estimated outputs are applied in the scene recovery equation.The image obtained from color correction is subjected to a fusion process where the image is categorized into two versions and applied to white balance and contrast enhancement techniques.The resultants are divided into three weight maps namely,luminance,saliency,chromaticity and fused using the Laplacian pyramid.The results obtained are graphically compared with their input data using RGB Histogram plot.Finally,image quality is measured and tabulated using underwater image quality measures.

Experimental demonstration of influence of underwater turbulence on ghost imaging

It is difficult to obtain a clear image in underwater turbulence environment with classical imaging methods due to the absorption, scattering, and underwater turbulence on the propagation beam.However, ghost imaging(GI), a nonlocally imaging technique, has shown the turbulence-free ability in atmospheric turbulence by exploiting the second-order correlation between the signal beam and the reference beam.In this paper, we experimentally investigate the imaging quality of GI affected by the underwater environment, where the underwater environment is simulated by a 1 m×0.4 m×0.4 m tank with distilled water.The water temperature is controlled by a heater inside the tank, and a temperature gradient is obtained by putting the heater at different positions of the tank.The water vibration is produced by a heavy force, and the turbid medium is obtained by dissolving very small specks of CaCO3 in the water.A set of Hadamard speckle pattern pairs are generated and modulated on the incident beam, and then the beam illuminates on an unknown object after passing through the simulated underwater environment.With the second-order correlations, the image is reconstructed under different temperature gradients, water vibration, and turbid medium ratios.The results show that GI has the turbulence-free ability under lower temperature gradient, water vibration, and turbid media.The structural similarity image measurement(SSIM)values of the reconstructed images only start to decrease when the temperature gradient is greater than 4.0℃.The same temperature gradient produced at the different positions has a little effect on the quality of the underwater GI.

Optical polarization imaging for underwater target detection with non-scatter background

For conventional optical polarization imaging of underwater target,the polarization degree of backscatter should be pre-measured by averaging the pixel intensities in the no target region of the polarization images,and the polarization property of the target is assumed to be completely depolarized.When the scattering background is unseen in the field of view or the target is polarized,conventional method is helpless in detecting the target.An improvement is to use lots of co-polarization and cross polarization detection components.We propose a polarization subtraction method to estimate depolarization property of the scattering noise and target signal.And experiment in a quartz cuvette container is performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.The results show that the proposed method can work without scattering background reference,and further recover the target along with smooth surface for polarization preserving response.This study promotes the development of optical polarization imaging systems in underwater environments.

Polarimetric Laser Range-Gated Underwater Imaging

For conventional laser range-gated underwater imaging （RG[） systems, the target image is obtained based oil the reflective character of the target. One of the main performance limiting factors of conventional RGI is that, when the underwater target has the same reflectivity as the background, it is difficult to distinguish the target from the background. An improvement is to use the polarization components of the reflected light. On the basis of conventional RGI, we propose a polarimetric RGI system that employs a polarization generator and a polarization analyzer to detect and recognize underwater objects. Experimental results demonstrate that, by combining polarization with intensity information, we are better able to enhance identification of the underwater target from other objects of the same reflectivity.

Restoring Polarization Angle Map for High- Fidelity Underwater Imaging

Obtaining polarization information enables researchers to enhance underwater imaging quality by removing backscattering effect and to distinguish targets of different materials.However,due to the simplified assumption of unpolarized target light,most of the existing underwater polari-metric methods lose part of the polarization information,resulting in degraded imaging quality.In this work,a novel underwater polarimetric method is reported,which obtains the angle of polariza-tion(AOP)map to improve imaging quality.Specifically,the Stokes vectors were exploited to re-move the backscattering effect by obtaining two pairs of orthogonal polarization sub-images of the underwater scene.The target reflected light and the angle between the polarization directions of the target reflected light and the backscattered light were computed through the two groups of the or-thogonal polarized sub-images.The AOP map of the target light could be derived from the Stokes vectors.Then,the transmission map of the target light was estimated by using the non-local color priorly combined with the properties of light propagating underwater.Experiments show that the reported technique enables distinguishing different targets when the colors are similar.The quantit-ative metrics validate that the reported technique produces state-of-the-art performance for under-water imaging.

UnderwaterWaste Recognition and Localization Based on Improved YOLOv5

With the continuous development of the economy and society,plastic pollution in rivers,lakes,oceans,and other bodies of water is increasingly severe,posing a serious challenge to underwater ecosystems.Effective cleaning up of underwater litter by robots relies on accurately identifying and locating the plastic waste.However,it often causes significant challenges such as noise interference,low contrast,and blurred textures in underwater optical images.A weighted fusion-based algorithm for enhancing the quality of underwater images is proposed,which combines weighted logarithmic transformations,adaptive gamma correction,improved multi-scale Retinex(MSR)algorithm,and the contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization(CLAHE)algorithm.The proposed algorithm improves brightness,contrast,and color recovery and enhances detail features resulting in better overall image quality.A network framework is proposed in this article based on the YOLOv5 model.MobileViT is used as the backbone of the network framework,detection layer is added to improve the detection capability for small targets,self-attention and mixed-attention modules are introduced to enhance the recognition capability of important features.The cross stage partial(CSP)structure is employed in the spatial pyramid pooling(SPP)section to enrich feature information,and the complete intersection over union(CIOU)loss is replaced with the focal efficient intersection over union(EIOU)loss to accelerate convergence while improving regression accuracy.Experimental results proved that the target recognition algorithm achieved a recognition accuracy of 0.913 and ensured a recognition speed of 45.56 fps/s.Subsequently,Using red,green,blue and depth(RGB-D)camera to construct a system for identifying and locating underwater plastic waste.Experiments were conducted underwater for recognition,localization,and error analysis.The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for identifying and locating underwater plastic waste,and it has good localization accuracy.

An Approach to Underwater Image Enhancement Based on Image Structural Decomposition

Underwater imaging posts a challenge due to the degradation by the absorption and scattering occurred during light propagation as well as poor lighting conditions in water medium Although image filtering techniques are utilized to improve image quality effectively, problems of the distortion of image details and the bias of color correction still exist in output images due to the complexity of image texture distribution. This paper proposes a new underwater image enhancement method based on image struc- tural decomposition. By introducing a curvature factor into the Mumford_Shah_G decomposition algorithm, image details and struc- ture components are better preserved without the gradient effect. Thus, histogram equalization and Retinex algorithms are applied in the decomposed structure component for global image enhancement and non-uniform brightness correction for gray level and the color images, then the optical absorption spectrum in water medium is incorporate to improve the color correction. Finally, the en- hauced structure and preserved detail component are re.composed to generate the output. Experiments with real underwater images verify the image improvement by the proposed method in image contrast, brightness and color fidelity.

Underwater topography detection of Shuangzi Reefs with SAR images acquired in different time

Imaging mechanism of underwater topography by SAR and a underwater topography SAR detection model built on the theory of underwater topography detection with SAR image presented by Yuan Yeli are used to detect the underwater topography of Shuangzi Reefs in the Nansha Islands with three scenes of SAR images acquired in different time. Detection results of three SAR images are compared with the chart topography and the detection errors are analyzed. Underwater topography detection experiments of Shuangzi Reefs show that the detection model is practicable. The detection results indicate that SAR images acquired in different time also can be used to detect the underwater topography, and the detection results are affected by the ocean conditions in the SAR acquiring time.

Underwater image enhancement based on red channel weighted compensation and gamma correction model

Due to the special characteristics of light in water,the information of the red channel is seriously attenuated in collected image.This causes other colors to dominate the image.This paper proposes an underwater image enhancement algorithm based on red channel weighted compensation and gamma correction model.Firstly,by analyzing the attenuation characteristics of RGB channels,the intensity and the edge information of red channel are compensated by weighting the attenuation coefficient ratio between different channels to correct the chromaticity.Then the gamma correction model is employed to stretch the intensity range to enhance the contrast which makes the image look clearer.The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can correct the color cast effect and improve the contrast by nearly 2 times for the underwater images with too much red component attenuation.

A detection model of underwater topography with a series of SAR images acquired at different time

underwater topography is one of oceanic features detected by Synthetic Aperture Radar.Underwater topography SAR imaging mechanism shows that tidal current is the important factor for underwater topography SAR imaging.Thus under the same wind field condition,SAR images for the same area acquired at different time include different information of the underwater topography.To utilize synchronously SAR images acquired at different time for the underwater topography SAR detection and improve the precision of detection,based on the detection model of underwater topography with single SAR image and the periodicity of tidal current,a detection model of underwater topography with a series of SAR images acquired at different time is developed by combing with tide and tidal current numerical simulation.To testify the feasibility of the presented model,Taiwan Shoal located at the south outlet of Taiwan Strait is selected as study area and three SAR images are used in the underwater topography detection.The detection results are compared with the field observation data of water depth carried out by R/V Dongfanghong 2,and the errors of the detection are compared with those of the single SAR image.All comparisons show that the detection model presented in the paper improves the precision of underwater topography SAR detection,and the presented model is feasible.

A Fast Underwater Optical Image Segmentation Algorithm Based on a Histogram Weighted Fuzzy C-means Improved by PSO

The S/N of an underwater image is low and has a fuzzy edge.If using traditional methods to process it directly,the result is not satisfying.Though the traditional fuzzy C-means algorithm can sometimes divide the image into object and background,its time-consuming computation is often an obstacle.The mission of the vision system of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is to rapidly and exactly deal with the information about the object in a complex environment for the AUV to use the obtained result to execute the next task.So,by using the statistical characteristics of the gray image histogram,a fast and effective fuzzy C-means underwater image segmentation algorithm was presented.With the weighted histogram modifying the fuzzy membership,the above algorithm can not only cut down on a large amount of data processing and storage during the computation process compared with the traditional algorithm,so as to speed up the efficiency of the segmentation,but also improve the quality of underwater image segmentation.Finally,particle swarm optimization (PSO) described by the sine function was introduced to the algorithm mentioned above.It made up for the shortcomings that the FCM algorithm can not get the global optimal solution.Thus,on the one hand,it considers the global impact and achieves the local optimal solution,and on the other hand,further greatly increases the computing speed.Experimental results indicate that the novel algorithm can reach a better segmentation quality and the processing time of each image is reduced.They enhance efficiency and satisfy the requirements of a highly effective,real-time AUV.

Underwater Image Bidirectional Matching for Localization Based on SIFT

For the purpose of identifying the stern of the SWATH （Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull） availably and perfecting the detection technique of the SWATH ship＇s performance, this paper presents a novel bidirectional image registration strategy and mosaicing technique based on the scale invariant feature transform （SIFT） algorithm. The proposed method can help us observe the stern with a great visual angle for analyzing the performance of the control fins of the SWATH. SIFT is one of the most effective local features of the scale, rotation and illumination invariant. However, there are a few false match rates in this algorithm. In terms of underwater machine vision, only by acquiring an accurate match rate can we find an underwater robot rapidly and identify the location of the object. Therefore, firstly, the selection of the match ratio principle is put forward in this paper; secondly, some advantages of the bidirectional registration algorithm are concluded by analyzing the characteristics of the unidirectional matching method. Finally, an automatic underwater image splicing method is proposed on the basis of fixed dimension, and then the edge of the image＇s overlapping section is merged by the principal components analysis algorithm. The experimental results achieve a better registration and smooth mosaicing effect, demonstrating that the proposed method is effective.

Research on the Application of Super Resolution Reconstruction Algorithm for Underwater Image

Underwater imaging is widely used in ocean,river and lake exploration,but it is affected by properties of water and the optics.In order to solve the lower-resolution underwater image formed by the influence of water and light,the image super-resolution reconstruction technique is applied to the underwater image processing.This paper addresses the problem of generating super-resolution underwater images by convolutional neural network framework technology.We research the degradation model of underwater images,and analyze the lower-resolution factors of underwater images in different situations,and compare different traditional super-resolution image reconstruction algorithms.We further show that the algorithm of super-resolution using deep convolution networks(SRCNN)which applied to super-resolution underwater images achieves good results.

Underwater Terrain-Aided Navigation Based on Multibeam Bathymetric Sonar Images

Underwater terrain-aided navigation is used to complement the traditional inertial navigation employed by autonomous underwater vehicles during lengthy missions. It can provide fixed estimations by matching real-time depth data with a digital terrain map, This study presents the concept of using image processing techniques in the underwater terrain matching process. A traditional gray-scale histogram of an image is enriched by incorporation with spatial information in pixels. Edge comer pixels are then defined and used to construct an edge comer histogram, which employs as a template to scan the digital terrain map and estimate the fixes of the vehicle by searching the correlation peak. Simulations are performed to investigate the robustness of the proposed method, particularly in relation to its sensitivity to background noise, the scale of real-time images, and the travel direction of the vehicle. At an image resolution of 1 m2/pixel, the accuracy of localization is more than 10 meters.

Underwater topography detection of Taiwan Shoal with SAR images

Under suitable conditions of tidal current and wind, underwater topography can be detected by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) indirectly. Underwater topography SAR imaging includes three physical processes: radar ocean surface backscattering, the modulation of sea surface short wave spectrum by the variations in sea surface currents, and the modulation of sea surface currents by the underwater topography. The first process is described usually by Bragg scattering theory because the incident angle of SAR is always between 20°-70°. The second process is described by the action balance equation. The third process is described by an ocean hydrodynamic model. Based on the SAR imaging mechanism for underwater topography, an underwater topography SAR detection model and a simplified method for its calculation are introduced. In the detection model, a two-dimensional hydrodynamic model – the shallow water model is used to describe the motion of tidal current. Due to the difficulty of determining the expression of SAR backscattering cross section in which some terms can not be determined, the backscattering cross section of SAR image used in the underwater topography SAR detection is pro-processed by the simulated SAR image of the coarse-grid water depth to simplify the calculation. Taiwan Shoal, located at the southwest outlet of Taiwan Strait, is selected as an evaluation area for this technique due to the occurrence of hundreds of sand waves. The underwater topography of Taiwan Shoal was detected by two scenes of ERS-2 SAR images which were acquired on 9 January 2000 and 6 June 2004. The detection results are compared with in situ measured water depths for three profiles. The average absolute and relative errors of the best detection result are 2.23 m and 7.5 %, respectively. These show that the detection model and the simplified method introduced in the paper is feasible.