Underwater image enhancement by dehazing and color correction.

Poor visibility due to the effects of light absorption and scattering is challenging for processing underwater images. We propose an approach based on dehazing and color correction algorithms for underwater image enhancement. First, a simple dehazing algorithm is applied to remove the effects of haze in the underwater image. Second, color compensation, histogram equalization, saturation, and intensity stretching are used to improve contrast, brightness, color, and visibility of the underwater image. Furthermore, bilateral filtering is utilized to address the problem of the noise caused by the physical properties of the medium and the histogram equalization algorithm. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, we compared our results with six existing methods using the subjective technique, objective technique, and color cast tests. The results show that the proposed approach outperforms the six existing methods. The enhanced images, as a result of implementing the proposed approach, are characterized by relatively genuine color, increased contrast and brightness, reduced noise level, and better visibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]