Underwater Optical Image Processing: A Comprehensive Review
It provides a comprehensive overview for researchers and practitioners working with underwater imaging, but it is incremental as it synthesizes existing methods without introducing new solutions.
This paper reviews state-of-the-art techniques in underwater image processing, covering methods like descattering and color restoration to address issues such as noise and scatters in images from underwater cameras, based on an analysis of over 40 papers.
Underwater cameras are widely used to observe the sea floor. They are usually included in autonomous underwater vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles, and in situ ocean sensor networks. Despite being an important sensor for monitoring underwater scenes, there exist many issues with recent underwater camera sensors. Because of lights transportation characteristics in water and the biological activity at the sea floor, the acquired underwater images often suffer from scatters and large amounts of noise. Over the last five years, many methods have been proposed to overcome traditional underwater imaging problems. This paper aims to review the state-of-the-art techniques in underwater image processing by highlighting the contributions and challenges presented in over 40 papers. We present an overview of various underwater image processing approaches, such as underwater image descattering, underwater image color restoration, and underwater image quality assessments. Finally, we summarize the future trends and challenges in designing and processing underwater imaging sensors.