An illumination adaptive underwater image enhancement method

Abstract

In underwater imagery, issues such as non-uniform illumination, blurriness, and low contrast are prevalent, significantly impacting the quality of captured images. In recent years, numerous researchers have delved into underwater image processing. Due to the intricacies of underwater environments, low-light images have different requirements compared to well-illuminated ones. However, existing algorithms often struggle to address the non-uniform illumination issues stemming from various lighting conditions in underwater settings. They also lack the capability to adaptively enhance underwater images with varying brightness. To tackle these challenges, we propose an adaptive illumination enhancement method for underwater images. This algorithm offers the capability to adaptively enhance underwater images suffering from detail blurriness based on their original brightness. Furthermore, it dynamically adjusts the parameters of the gamma function using the image's illumination component to augment color contrast. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach outperforms other algorithms, as evidenced by superior scores in UIQM metric. It effectively addresses edge blurriness and non-uniform illumination issues prevalent in underwater images captured under varying lighting conditions.