A Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Images
Date
2019
Authors
Marques, Tunai Porto
Albu, Alexandra Branzan
Hoeberechts, Maia
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Imaging
Abstract
Underwater images are often acquired in sub-optimal lighting conditions, in particular at profound depths where the absence of natural light demands the use of artificial lighting. Low-lighting images impose a challenge for both manual and automated analysis, since regions of interest can have low visibility. A new framework capable of significantly enhancing these images is proposed in this article. The framework is based on a novel dehazing mechanism that considers local contrast information in the input images, and offers a solution to three common disadvantages of current single image dehazing methods: oversaturation of radiance, lack of scale-invariance and creation of halos. A novel low-lighting underwater image dataset, OceanDark, is introduced to assist in the development and evaluation of the proposed framework. Experimental results and a comparison with other underwater-specific image enhancement methods show that the proposed framework can be used for significantly improving the visibility in low-lighting underwater images of different scales, without creating undesired dehazing artifacts.
Description
Keywords
image enhancement, image dehazing, underwater image analysis, Ocean Networks Canada
Citation
Marques, T.P., Albu, A.B. & Hoeberechts, M. (2019). A Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Images. Journal of Imaging, 5(10), 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging5100079