Contrast and color improvement based haze removal of underwater images using fusion technique

Scattering and absorption of light in water leads to degradation of images captured under the water. This degradation includes diminished colors, low brightness and undistinguishable objects in the image. To improve the quality of such degraded images, we have proposed fusion based underwater image enhancement technique that focuses on improving of the contrast and color of underwater images using contrast stretching and Auto White Balance. Our proposed method is very simple and straightforward that contributes greatly in uplifting the visibility of underwater images.