VRS-UIE: Value-Driven Reordering Scanning for Underwater Image Enhancement

TL;DR

This paper introduces VRS-UIE, a novel underwater image enhancement framework that dynamically reorders the processing sequence based on pixel importance, significantly improving enhancement quality and efficiency.

Contribution

The paper proposes a value-driven reordering scanning framework with a multi-granularity guidance module, a new Mamba-Conv Mixer block, and a cross-feature bridge, advancing underwater image enhancement techniques.

Findings

Achieves state-of-the-art enhancement performance, surpassing previous methods by 0.89 dB.

Effectively suppresses water bias and preserves image structure and color fidelity.

Develops a lightweight version suitable for real-time applications.

Abstract

State Space Models (SSMs) have emerged as a promising backbone for vision tasks due to their linear complexity and global receptive field. However, in the context of Underwater Image Enhancement (UIE), the standard sequential scanning mechanism is fundamentally challenged by the unique statistical distribution characteristics of underwater scenes. The predominance of large-portion, homogeneous but useless oceanic backgrounds can dilute the feature representation responses of sparse yet valuable targets, thereby impeding effective state propagation and compromising the model's ability to preserve both local semantics and global structure. To address this limitation, we propose a novel Value-Driven Reordering Scanning framework for UIE, termed VRS-UIE. Its core innovation is a Multi-Granularity Value Guidance Learning (MVGL) module that generates a pixel-aligned value map to dynamically reorder the SSM's scanning sequence. This prioritizes informative regions to facilitate the long-range state propagation of salient features. Building upon the MVGL, we design a Mamba-Conv Mixer (MCM) block that synergistically integrates priority-driven global sequencing with dynamically adjusted local convolutions, thereby effectively modeling both large-portion oceanic backgrounds and high-value semantic targets. A Cross-Feature Bridge (CFB) further refines multi-level feature fusion. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our VRS-UIE framework sets a new state-of-the-art, delivering superior enhancement performance (surpassing WMamba by 0.89 dB on average) by effectively suppressing water bias and preserving structural and color fidelity. Furthermore, by incorporating efficient convolutional operators and resolution rescaling, we construct a light-weight yet effective scheme, VRS-UIE-S, suitable for real-time UIE applications.