Quality Of Underwater Images Research Articles

YOLO-GE: An Attention Fusion Enhanced Underwater Object Detection Algorithm

Underwater object detection is a challenging task with profound implications for fields such as aquaculture, marine ecological protection, and maritime rescue operations. The presence of numerous small aquatic organisms in the underwater environment often leads to issues of missed detections and false positives. Additionally, factors such as the water quality result in weak target features, which adversely affect the extraction of target feature information. Furthermore, the lack of illumination underwater causes image blur and low contrast, thereby increasing the difficulty of the detection task. To address these issues, we propose a novel underwater object detection algorithm called YOLO-GE (GCNet-EMA). First, we introduce an image enhancement module to mitigate the impact of underwater image quality issues on the detection task. Second, a high-resolution feature layer is added into the network to improve the problems of missed detections and false positives for small targets. Third, we propose GEBlock, an attention-based fusion module that captures long-range contextual information and suppresses noise from lower-level feature layers. Finally, we combine an adaptive spatial fusion module with the detection head to filter out conflicting feature information from different feature layers. Experiments on the UTDAC2020, DUO and RUOD datasets show that the proposed method achieves an optimal detection accuracy.

An effectual underwater image enhancement framework using adaptive trans-resunet ++ with attention mechanism

ABSTRACT The intricacy of the underwater setting makes it difficult for optical lenses to capture clear underwater photos without haze and colour distortion. Some studies use domain adaptation and transfer learning to address this issue, they aim to reduce the latent mismatch between composition and real-world data, making the space of latent data difficult to read and impractical to control. The background light is a crucial component of the decaying paradigm that directly impacts how well images are enhanced. Thus, to improve the quality of the images over the underwater, new deep-learning techniques are being designed in this paper. Here, the Adaptive Trans-ResUnet++ with Attention Mechanism-based model performs the real-time underwater image enhancement process. In addition, a novel Random Enhanced Artificial Gorilla Troops Optimizer algorithm model is used for optimising the parameters over the given model to further enhance the given model’s performance. A diverse quantitative and qualitative validation is also carried out to learn the enhancement of underwater image quality. The enhanced underwater image may be also useful in the underwater object detection process. Thus, the enhanced images obtained from the developed model are compared with the existing techniques to confirm the efficacy of the suggested underwater image enhancement process.

Weakly Supervised Underwater Object Real-time Detection Based on High-resolution Attention Class Activation Mapping and Category Hierarchy

Recently, deep learning-based underwater object detection technology has achieved remarkable success. However, the accuracy and completeness of dataset instance annotation are crucial for its success. The quality of underwater images is low, severe objects clustering, and occlusion, acquiring object's annotations demands substantial time and labor costs, while mis annotation and missed annotation can also degrade model performance and limit their application in practical scenarios. To address this issue, this paper presents a novel weakly supervised underwater object real-time detection method, which is divided into two subtasks: weakly supervised object localization and real-time object detection. In the weakly supervised object localization task, we design a novel category hierarchy structure network that integrates the high-resolution attention-class activation mapping algorithm to obtain high-quality object class activation maps, weaken background interference, and obtain more complete object regions. The parameterized spatial loss module is devised to enable the model to escape from local optimal solutions, thus accurately and efficiently obtaining object pseudo-detection annotation boxes. For the real-time object detection task, the single-stage detector YOLOv7 is selected as the basic detection model, and an object perception loss function is designed based on the class activation map to jointly supervise the training process. A method for filtering noisy pseudo-supervision information is proposed to enhance the pseudo-supervision information involved in training. Ablation experiments and multi-method comparison experiments were conducted on the URPC and RUOD datasets, and the results verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, and our model exhibits significant advantages in detection performance and detection efficiency compared to current mainstream and advanced models.

Contour and texture preservation underwater image restoration via low-rank regularizations

Due to the wavelength-dependent absorption and scattering, underwater images are often degraded by color distortion, haze, and low contrast. Despite the great advancements achieved in improving the quality of underwater image, the loss of contour and texture details in the restored results remains a major obstacle for subsequent high-level visual tasks. To this end, we develop a novel variational model, including one data term and two fidelity terms, for underwater image restoration. Technically, according to Retinex theory, we first extend the traditional underwater image formation (UIF) model by decomposing the total radiance into the reflectance component and illumination component. Based on the extended UIF model, two low-rank penalty regularization terms are designed to constrain the gradients of reflectance and illumination. Furthermore, we innovatively incorporate the weighted fusion bright-dark channel algorithm and the fusion upper-middle channel prior algorithm into the proposed variational model for estimating the local background light (ambient illumination) and transmission map, respectively. Simultaneously, based on the alternating direction multiplier method (ADMM), we develop a fast optimization algorithm to speed up the iterative process. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is effective in removing haze, enhancing contrast and sharpness, as well as preserving the image contour and texture details. Comprehensive comparisons on two large-scale underwater image datasets further validate the superiority of our method against several state-of-the-art methods in both qualitative and quantitative evaluations. The code of the proposed method will be available soon.

Optimized underwater light attenuation prior-based depth estimation and adaptive feature fusion CNN for underwater image and video enhancement

Underwater images and videos play an essential communication tool in exploring ocean resources and understanding underwater scene perception. The underwater imaging environment and the complex lighting conditions degrade the quality of the images and make them low contrast, color deviation, and blurring. These degraded images lack effective target recognition information, significantly impacting the performance of underwater application systems. To solve the above issues, a new module for underwater video as well as image enhancement is proposed. The input video is given to the frame extraction phase for converting the video into the frame. Thereafter, the blur detection and determination are done using Laplacian's variance technique for determining blurred images. The depth estimation is done using Underwater Light Attenuation Prior (ULAP), wherein coefficients are determined using the proposed Competitive Multi-Verse bird swarm Optimization (CMVBSO). The CMVBSO is combined by integrating a competitive multiverse optimizer (CMVO) and a Bird Swarm Algorithm (BSA). The blurred value, input video frame and depth estimated output are given to adaptive feature fusion CNN in which training is done utilizing Manta-Ray Foraging Lion Optimization (MRLLO). The pixel enhancement is carried out using a Type II Fuzzy system and Cuckoo Search optimization algorithm filter (T2FCS) filter. The proposed CMVBSO_ULAP provided better performance with a Peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) of 35.037 dB, Mean square error (MSE) of 3.684, Structural similarity index (SSIM) of 0.911, underwater image quality measure (UIQM) of 5.266 and Underwater Color Image Quality Evaluation (UCIQE) of 0.818 respectively.

CCM-Net: Color compensation and coordinate attention guided underwater image enhancement with multi-scale feature aggregation

Due to the light scattering and wavelength absorption in water, underwater images exhibit blurred details, low contrast, and color deviation. Existing underwater image enhancement methods are divided into traditional methods and deep learning-based methods. Traditional methods either rely on scene prior and lack robustness, or are not flexible enough resulting in poor enhancement effects. Deep learning methods have achieved good results in the field of underwater image enhancement due to their powerful feature representation ability. However, these methods cannot enhance underwater images with various degradations because they do not consider the inconsistent attenuation of different color channels and spatial regions. In this paper, we propose a novel asymmetric encoder-decoder network for underwater image enhancement, called CCM-Net. Concretely, we first introduce the prior knowledge-based encoder, which includes color compensation (CC) modules and feature extraction modules that consist of depth-wise separable convolution and global-local coordinate attention (GLCA). Then, we design a multi-scale feature aggregation (MFA) module to integrate shallow, middle, and deep features. Finally, we deploy a decoder to reconstruct the underwater images with the extracted features. Extensive experiments on publicly available datasets demonstrate that our CCM-Net effectively improves the visual quality of underwater images and achieves impressive performance.

Underwater image restoration method based on Walsh–Hadamard transform and attenuation coefficient estimation

Abstract Underwater images often exhibit color distortion and low contrast due to the scattering and absorption of light as it travels through water. Changes in lighting conditions further complicate the restoration and enhancement of these images. Improving the quality of underwater images is crucial for advancements in fields such as marine biology research, underwater measurement, and environmental monitoring. This paper proposes an underwater image restoration method based on the Image Formation Model (IFM), utilizing the Walsh–Hadamard transform and attenuation coefficient estimation. Traditional methods rely on dark channel prior and maximum intensity prior to estimate background light (BL) and transmission maps (TMs), often performing poorly in various underwater environments. Our method uses image blur to estimate BL and depth maps and derives three-channel attenuation coefficients using the gray-world theory to obtain a more accurate TM. Experimental results on real underwater images show that our method effectively eliminates color deviation and contrast distortion while preserving image details, significantly outperforming other IFM-based restoration techniques. Compared to the closest competing algorithms, our method achieves better UIQM and UCIQE scores.

Enhancing Underwater Object Detection and Classification Using Advanced Imaging Techniques: A Novel Approach with Diffusion Models

Underwater object detection and classification pose significant challenges due to environmental factors such as water turbidity and variable lighting conditions. This research proposes a novel approach that integrates advanced imaging techniques with diffusion models to address these challenges effectively, aligning with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14: Life Below Water. The methodology leverages the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM), Modified Swin Transformer Block (MSTB), and Diffusion model to enhance the quality of underwater images, thereby improving the accuracy of object detection and classification tasks. This study utilizes the TrashCan dataset, comprising diverse underwater scenes and objects, to validate the proposed method’s efficacy. This study proposes an advanced imaging technique YOLO (you only look once) network (AIT-YOLOv7) for detecting objects in underwater images. This network uses a modified U-Net, which focuses on informative features using a convolutional block channel and spatial attentions for color correction and a modified swin transformer block for resolution enhancement. A novel diffusion model proposed using modified U-Net with ResNet understands the intricate structures in images with underwater objects, which enhances detection capabilities under challenging visual conditions. Thus, AIT-YOLOv7 net precisely detects and classifies different classes of objects present in this dataset. These improvements are crucial for applications in marine ecology research, underwater archeology, and environmental monitoring, where precise identification of marine debris, biological organisms, and submerged artifacts is essential. The proposed framework advances underwater imaging technology and supports the sustainable management of marine resources and conservation efforts. The experimental results demonstrate that state-of-the-art object detection methods, namely SSD, YOLOv3, YOLOv4, and YOLOTrashCan, achieve mean accuracies (mAP@0.5) of 57.19%, 58.12%, 59.78%, and 65.01%, respectively, whereas the proposed AIT-YOLOv7 net reaches a mean accuracy (mAP@0.5) of 81.4% on the TrashCan dataset, showing a 16.39% improvement. Due to this improvement in the accuracy and efficiency of underwater object detection, this research contributes to broader marine science and technology efforts, promoting the better understanding and management of aquatic ecosystems and helping to prevent and reduce the marine pollution, as emphasized in SDG 14.

Underwater image enhancement using contrast correction

AbstractLight‐induced degeneration of underwater images occurs by physical features of seawater. According to the wavelength of the colour spectrum, light reduces intensity significantly when it moves through water. The greatest wavelength of light that is visible gets absorbed first. Red and blue absorb the most and least, respectively. Because of the reducing consequences of the light spectrum, underwater images having poor contrast can be obtained. As a result, the crucial data contained inside these images will not be effectively retrieved for later analysis. The recent research suggests a novel approach to enhance the contrast while decreasing noise in underwater images. The recommended approach involves image histogram transformation using two significant colour spaces, Red‐Green‐Blue (RGB) and Hue‐Saturation‐Value (HSV). The histogram of the dominant colour channel (blue channel) in the RGB colour model is extended towards the lower level, containing a maximum limitation of 95%, while the inferior red colour channel has been extended towards the upper side, containing a minimum limitation of 5%. During the entire dynamic range, the green colour channel having the dominant and inferior colour channels expands in each direction. The Rayleigh distribution has been utilized for developing various stretching actions within the RGB colour space. The image has been converted to the HSV colour space, having the S and V elements adjusted within 1% of their minimum and maximum values. The suggested approach is examined in both qualitative and quantitative analysis. According to qualitative analysis, the recommended approach substantially boosts image contrast, lowers its blue and green effect, and minimizes over‐enhanced and under‐enhanced sections in the final resultant underwater image. The quantitative examination of 500 large scale underwater images dataset reveals that the suggested technique generates better results. The dataset images are grouped into small fish images, blue coral images, stone wall images, and coral branch images. The quantitative examination of all these four groups have been evaluated and shown. The average mean square error, peak signal to noise ratio, underwater image quality measurement, and underwater colour image quality evaluation values of dataset images are 76.69, 31.25, 3.85, and 0.64, respectively. These values of our proposed work outperform six other previous methods.

Transformer-based improved U-net for high-performance underwater polarization imaging

Polarization imaging plays an important role in underwater imaging technology, as it allows for the suppression of backscattering light and thus enhances the quality of underwater images. Furthermore, with advancements in computer hardware technology, deep learning (DL) has experienced rapid development in recent years. However, existing methods based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) have the limitations of local feature extraction and fail to full use of the salient target’s polarization features. In this paper, we propose a transformer-based improved U-Net (TIU-Net) to further improve the performance of underwater polarization imaging. The proposed TIU-Net leverages CNN and transformer module to extract short-range and long-range features respectively for underwater target reconstruction. Meanwhile, by entering multi-dimensional information, each of which has a different emphasis on the expression of target features, to enhance the performance and stability of the reconstruction model. Experimental results on our established polarization underwater dataset show the superiority of our proposed method for underwater imaging, achieving the efficient imaging and high-quality generalization imaging in highly turbid underwater environments.

MSFE-UIENet: A Multi-Scale Feature Extraction Network for Marine Underwater Image Enhancement

Underwater optical images have outstanding advantages for short-range underwater target detection tasks. However, owing to the limitations of special underwater imaging environments, underwater images often have several problems, such as noise interference, blur texture, low contrast, and color distortion. Marine underwater image enhancement addresses degraded underwater image quality caused by light absorption and scattering. This study introduces MSFE-UIENet, a high-performance network designed to improve image feature extraction, resulting in deep-learning-based underwater image enhancement, addressing the limitations of single convolution and upsampling/downsampling techniques. This network is designed to enhance the image quality in underwater settings by employing an encoder–decoder architecture. In response to the underwhelming enhancement performance caused by the conventional networks’ sole downsampling method, this study introduces a pyramid downsampling module that captures more intricate image features through multi-scale downsampling. Additionally, to augment the feature extraction capabilities of the network, an advanced feature extraction module was proposed to capture detailed information from underwater images. Furthermore, to optimize the network’s gradient flow, forward and backward branches were introduced to accelerate its convergence rate and improve stability. Experimental validation using underwater image datasets indicated that the proposed network effectively enhances underwater image quality, effectively preserving image details and noise suppression across various underwater environments.

Joint Luminance-Saliency Prior and Attention for Underwater Image Quality Assessment

Underwater images, as a crucial medium for storing ocean information in underwater sensors, play a vital role in various underwater tasks. However, they are prone to distortion due to the imaging environment, which leads to a decline in visual quality, which is an urgent issue for various marine vision systems to address. Therefore, it is necessary to develop underwater image enhancement (UIE) and corresponding quality assessment methods. At present, most underwater image quality assessment (UIQA) methods primarily rely on extracting handcrafted features that characterize degradation attributes, which struggle to measure complex mixed distortions and often exhibit discrepancies with human visual perception in practical applications. Furthermore, current UIQA methods lack the consideration of the perception perspective of enhanced effects. To this end, this paper employs luminance and saliency priors as critical visual information for the first time to measure the enhancement effect of global and local quality achieved by the UIE algorithms, named JLSAU. The proposed JLSAU is built upon an overall pyramid-structured backbone, supplemented by the Luminance Feature Extraction Module (LFEM) and Saliency Weight Learning Module (SWLM), which aim at obtaining perception features with luminance and saliency priors at multiple scales. The supplement of luminance priors aims to perceive visually sensitive global distortion of luminance, including histogram statistical features and grayscale features with positional information. The supplement of saliency priors aims to perceive visual information that reflects local quality variation both in spatial and channel domains. Finally, to effectively model the relationship among different levels of visual information contained in the multi-scale features, the Attention Feature Fusion Module (AFFM) is proposed. Experimental results on the public UIQE and UWIQA datasets demonstrate that the proposed JLSAU outperforms existing state-of-the-art UIQA methods.

A novel underwater object detection enhanced algorithm based on YOLOv5‐MH

AbstractUnderwater object detection is an important application of underwater vehicles. However, traditional underwater object detection algorithms have several shortcomings in underwater settings. These include imprecise feature extraction, slow detection speeds, and a lack of robustness. To address these shortcomings, a novel approach based on YOLOv5‐MH (Multi‐Head) is proposed in this paper. Firstly, an image enhancement technique is utilised. This technique uses adaptive linear mapping to adjust contrast and improve the quality of underwater images. Secondly, the C2f module for feature extraction is employed to enable more effective capture of object characteristics. Subsequently, the multi‐head self‐attention and coordinate attention are integrated into the network's backbone. This integration increases the attention given to input data, thereby enhancing the network's performance in handling complex tasks. Furthermore, a bidirectional feature pyramid is implemented to adeptly handle objects of varying scales and sizes, and elevate model performance. Finally, through comprehensive testing on the 2018 URPC dataset and deep plastic dataset, this method demonstrates superior performance. This performance is compared to the original YOLOv5 and other similar networks. It holds immense promise for practical applications across a wide spectrum of underwater tasks.

NUAM-Net: A Novel Underwater Image Enhancement Attention Mechanism Network

Vision-based underwater exploration is crucial for marine research. However, the degradation of underwater images due to light attenuation and scattering poses a significant challenge. This results in the poor visual quality of underwater images and impedes the development of vision-based underwater exploration systems. Recent popular learning-based Underwater Image Enhancement (UIE) methods address this challenge by training enhancement networks with annotated image pairs, where the label image is manually selected from the reference images of existing UIE methods since the groundtruth of underwater images do not exist. Nevertheless, these methods encounter uncertainty issues stemming from ambiguous multiple-candidate references. Moreover, they often suffer from local perception and color perception limitations, which hinder the effective mitigation of wide-range underwater degradation. This paper proposes a novel NUAM-Net (Novel Underwater Image Enhancement Attention Mechanism Network) that addresses these limitations. NUAM-Net leverages a probabilistic training framework, measuring enhancement uncertainty to learn the UIE mapping from a set of ambiguous reference images. By extracting features from both the RGB and LAB color spaces, our method fully exploits the fine-grained color degradation clues of underwater images. Additionally, we enhance underwater feature extraction by incorporating a novel Adaptive Underwater Image Enhancement Module (AUEM) that incorporates both local and long-range receptive fields. Experimental results on the well-known UIEBD benchmark demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms popular UIE methods in terms of PSNR while maintaining a favorable Mean Opinion Score. The ablation study also validates the effectiveness of our proposed method.

Deep Learning-Driven Parameter Adaptation for Underwater Image Restoration

In this paper we propose a learning-based approach to enhance underwater image quality by optimizing parameters and applying intensity transformations. Our methodology involves training a CNN Regression model on diverse underwater images to learn enhancing parameters, followed by applying intensity transformation techniques. In order to evaluate our approach, we conducted experiments using well-known underwater image datasets found in the literature, comprising real-world subaquatic images and we propose a novel underwater image dataset, composed by 276 images from Amazon turbid water rivers. The results demonstrate that our approach achieves an impressive accuracy rate in three different underwater image datasets. This high level of accuracy showcases the robustness and efficiency of our proposed method in restoring underwater images.

Self-organized underwater image enhancement

Underwater images captured in diverse underwater scenes exhibit varying types and degrees of degradation, including color deviations, low contrast, blurry details, etc. Single image enhancement methods tend to insufficiently address the diverse degradation issues, resulting in inappropriate results that do not align well with human visual perception or underwater color prior. To overcome these deficiencies, we develop a novel reinforcement learning framework that selects a sequence of image enhancement methods and configures their parameters in a self-organized manner for the purpose of underwater image enhancement. In contrast to end-to-end deep learning-based black-box mechanisms, the novel framework operates in a white-box fashion where the mechanisms for the method selection and parameter configuration are transparent. Furthermore, our framework incorporates the human visual perception and the underwater color prior into non-reference score increments for rewarding the underwater image enhancement. This breaks through the training limit imposed by volunteer-selected enhanced images as references. Comprehensive qualitative and quantitative experiments ultimately demonstrate that our framework outperforms nine state-of-the-art underwater image enhancement methods in terms of visual quality, and achieves better performance in five underwater image quality assessment metrics on three underwater image datasets. We release our code at https://gitee.com/wanghaoupc/Self_organized_UIE.

Breakthrough Underwater Physical Environment Limitations on Optical Information Representations: An Overview and Suggestions

Underwater optics have seen a notable surge of interest in recent years, emerging as a critical medium for conveying information crucial to underwater resource exploration, autonomous underwater vehicle navigation, etc. The intricate dynamics of underwater optical transmission, influenced by factors such as the absorption by the water and scattering by multiple particles, present considerable challenges. One of the most critical issues is that the optical information representation methods fail to take into account the impact of the underwater physical environment. We conducted a comprehensive review and analysis of recent advancements in underwater optical transmission laws and models. We summarized and analyzed relevant research on the effects of underwater particles and turbulence on light and analyzed the polarization effects in various environments. Then, the roles of various types of underwater optical propagation models were analyzed. Although optical models in complex environments are still mostly based on Monte Carlo methods, many underwater optical propagation mechanisms have been revealed and can promote the impacts of optical information expression. We delved into the cutting-edge research findings across three key domains: the enhancement of underwater optical image quality, the 3D reconstruction from monocular images, and the underwater wireless optical communication, examining the pivotal role played by light transmission laws and models in these areas. Drawing upon our extensive experience in underwater optics, including underwater optical sensor development and experiments, we identified and underscored future directions in this field. We advocate for the necessity of further advancements in the comprehension of underwater optical laws and physical models, emphasizing the importance of their expanded application in underwater optical information representations. Deeper exploration into these areas is not only warranted but essential for pushing the boundaries of current underwater optical technologies and unlocking new potential for their application in underwater optical sensor developments, underwater exploration, environmental monitoring, and beyond.

Retinex-based underwater image enhancement via adaptive color correction and hierarchical U-shape transformer

Underwater images can suffer from visibility and quality degradation due to the attenuation of propagated light and other factors unique to the underwater setting. While Retinex-based approaches have shown to be effective in enhancing the underwater image quality, the use of hand-crafted priors and optimization-driven solutions often prevent the adaptivity of these methods to different types of underwater images. Moreover, the commonly-used white balance strategy which often appears in the preprocessing stage of the underwater image enhancement (UIE) algorithms may give rise to unwanted color distortions due to the fact that wavelength-dependent light absorption is not taken into account. To overcome these potential limitations, in this paper, we present an effective UIE model based on adaptive color correction and data-driven Retinex decomposition. Specifically, an adaptive color balance approach which takes into account different attenuation levels for light with different wavelengths is proposed to adaptively enhance the three color channels. Furthermore, deep neural networks are employed for the Retinex decomposition, formulating the optimization problem as an implicit-prior-regularized model which is solved by learning the priors from a large training dataset. Finally, a hierarchical U-shape Transformer network which uses hierarchically-structured multi-scale feature extraction and selective feature aggregation is applied to the decomposed images for contrast enhancement and blur reduction. Experimental results tested on six benchmark underwater image datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed UIE model.

Real-time underwater object detection technology for complex underwater environments based on deep learning

Underwater object detection technology is crucial in many marine-related fields, including marine environmental monitoring, marine resource development, and marine ecological protection. However, this technology faces great challenges due to the poor quality of underwater optical images and the varying sizes of underwater objects. Therefore, we proposed an underwater optical detection network (UODN) based on the you only look once version 8 (YOLOv8) framework, which addresses these issues through the cross stage multi-branch (CSMB) module and large kernel spatial pyramid (LKSP) module. The aim of the CSMB module is to extract more features from underwater optical images to address the issue of poor image quality, while the LKSP module is designed to enhance the ability of the network to detect underwater objects of various scales. Furthermore, CSMBDarknet built by CSMB and LKSP can be used as the backbone of other underwater object detection algorithms for underwater feature extraction. Extensive experimental results on the underwater robot professional contest 2020 dataset revealed that the average precision (AP) of UODN increased by 1.0%, the AP50 of UODN increased by 1.1%, and the AP75 of UODN increased by 2.1% compared with those of the original YOLOv8s. Furthermore, UODN outperforms 12 state-of-the-art models on multiple underwater optical datasets, paving the way for future real-time and high-precision underwater object detection.

Underwater Image Enhancement Algorithm Based on Adversarial Training

Ocean observation is the first step in the development of the ocean, whose abundant resources and strategic significance are attracting increasing attention. Observation methods based on visual sensor networks have received great attention from researchers due to their visualization capability and high information capacity. However, below the sea surface, objective factors such as blurriness, turbulence, and underwater color casting can cause image distortion and affect the acquisition of images. In this paper, the enhancement of underwater images is tackled using an adversarial learning-based approach. First, pre-processing is applied to address the significant color casting in the dataset, thus enhancing feature learning for subsequent style transfer. Then, corresponding improvements are made to a generative adversarial network’s structure and loss functions to better restore the features of the network output. Finally, evaluations and comparisons are performed using underwater image quality assessment metrics and several public datasets. Through multidimensional experiments, the proposed algorithm is shown to exhibit excellent performance in both subjective and objective evaluation metrics compared to state-of-the-art algorithms, as well as in practical visual applications.