A Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Images

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dc.contributor.authorMarques, Tunai Porto
dc.contributor.authorAlbu, Alexandra Branzan
dc.contributor.authorHoeberechts, Maia
dc.date.accessioned2019-11-21T20:06:32Z
dc.date.available2019-11-21T20:06:32Z
dc.date.copyright2019en_US
dc.date.issued2019
dc.description.abstractUnderwater 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.en_US
dc.description.reviewstatusRevieweden_US
dc.description.scholarlevelFacultyen_US
dc.description.sponsorshipThis research was facilitated by a graduate research fellowship from the University of Victoria. In-kind support was also provided by Ocean Networks Canada.en_US
dc.identifier.citationMarques, 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/jimaging5100079en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jimaging5100079
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1828/11330
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherJournal of Imagingen_US
dc.subjectimage enhancement
dc.subjectimage dehazing
dc.subjectunderwater image analysis
dc.subjectOcean Networks Canada
dc.subject.departmentDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering
dc.subject.departmentDepartment of Computer Science
dc.titleA Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Imagesen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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