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Underwater image enhancement based on weighted guided filter image fusion

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Abstract

An underwater image enhancement technique based on weighted guided filter image fusion is proposed to address challenges, including optical absorption and scattering, color distortion, and uneven illumination. The method consists of three stages: color correction, local contrast enhancement, and fusion algorithm methods. In terms of color correction, basic correction is achieved through channel compensation and remapping, with saturation adjusted based on histogram distribution to enhance visual richness. For local contrast enhancement, the approach involves box filtering and a variational model to improve image saturation. Finally, the method utilizes weighted guided filter image fusion to achieve high visual quality underwater images. Additionally, our method outperforms eight state-of-the-art algorithms in no-reference metrics, demonstrating its effectiveness and innovation. We also conducted application tests and time comparisons to further validate the practicality of our approach.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by Special projects in universities' key fields of Guangdong Province (2023ZDZX3017), 2022 Tertiary Education Scientific research project of Guangzhou Municipal Education Bureau (202234607), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52371059) and (52101358). The General Universities' Key Scientific Research Platform Project of Guangdong Province(2023KSYS009).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Guangzhou Maritime University, Guangzhou, China

    Dan Xiang & Hao Zhao

  2. School of Electronics and Information, Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, Guangzhou, China

    Dan Xiang, Huihua Wang, Zebin Zhou & Chun Shan

  3. Guangdong Industrial Training Center, Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, Guangzhou, China

    Pan Gao

  4. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Green Construction and Intelligent Operation and Maintenance for Offshore Infrastructure, Guangzhou, China

    Jinwen Zhang

Authors
  1. Dan Xiang
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  2. Huihua Wang
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  4. Hao Zhao
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  5. Pan Gao
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  6. Jinwen Zhang
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Dan Xiang, Huihua Wang, Hao Zhao,Zebin Zhou and Pan Gao. The firstdraft of the manuscript was written by Huihua Wang and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Hao Zhao or Pan Gao.

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Communicated by Qiu Shen.

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Xiang, D., Wang, H., Zhou, Z. et al. Underwater image enhancement based on weighted guided filter image fusion. Multimedia Systems 30, 240 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-024-01432-7

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