Enhancement of Underwater Images using Color Balancing and Multi-Scale Fusion Technique

Abstract

The method proposed in this paper is efficient and does not need any external hardware nor does it need information regarding the conditions and structure of the scene which is to be enhanced after being captured in underwater as it is a degraded image due to presence of scattering and absorption intensity due to underwater particles and light. Two images, which are obtained after white balancing and color compensation of the degraded input image, are combined and the weight maps of the two images help in enhancement of edges and color contrast of the final output image. The creation of weight maps lead to the low frequency component of the recombined image having artifacts in it. Multiscale fusion technique has also been adopted in this paper. On making a comparative analysis, it was observed that the proposedmethod leads to enhancement of underwater images and videos in such a way that the dark regions exposition is improved, global contrast is better and edges are sharper.