Performance Evaluation of Image Processing Algorithms for Underwater Image Enhancement in FPGA

Abstract

Underwater photography is challenging due to poor illumination and varying environment condition. Due to the insufficient illumination provided by the Automated Underwater Vehicles (AUV), the obtained degraded images need to be enhanced. Image enhancement techniques have to be implemented in hardware to be used with AUVs. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) have been proved to be a better option for being used in image processing techniques due to it’s inherit parallelism. Various spatial domain techniques for image enhancement techniques such as power law transform, contrast stretching, Histogram Equalization, Histogram Stretching, Negative transformation are used to preprocess an underwater image. In this paper a comparative analysis of above image enhancement algorithm implemented in FPGA is done.