Underwater Optical Image Processing: A Comprehensive Review

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive review of recent underwater image processing techniques, addressing challenges like scattering and noise, and discusses future trends in sensor design and image enhancement methods.

Contribution

It offers an extensive overview of over 40 recent studies on underwater image processing, highlighting advancements, challenges, and future directions in the field.

Findings

Summarizes recent methods for underwater image descattering and color restoration.

Identifies key challenges in underwater imaging such as noise and light scattering.

Discusses future trends and potential research directions in underwater sensor technology.

Abstract

Underwater cameras are widely used to observe the sea floor. They are usually included in autonomous underwater vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles, and in situ ocean sensor networks. Despite being an important sensor for monitoring underwater scenes, there exist many issues with recent underwater camera sensors. Because of lights transportation characteristics in water and the biological activity at the sea floor, the acquired underwater images often suffer from scatters and large amounts of noise. Over the last five years, many methods have been proposed to overcome traditional underwater imaging problems. This paper aims to review the state-of-the-art techniques in underwater image processing by highlighting the contributions and challenges presented in over 40 papers. We present an overview of various underwater image processing approaches, such as underwater image descattering, underwater image color restoration, and underwater image quality assessments. Finally, we summarize the future trends and challenges in designing and processing underwater imaging sensors.