Underwater Color Image Enhancement Using Combining Schemes

AbstractUnderwater color image processing has received considerable attention in the last few decades for underwater image-based observation. In this article, a novel underwater image enhancement approach using combining schemes is presented. This study aims to improve color correction under nonuniform illumination conditions. The objective of this approach is threefold. First, to correct nonuniform illumination and enhance contrast in the image, homomorphic filtering is used. Second, the color contrast of an image is equalized by a contrast stretching algorithm in RGB (red, green and blue) color space. Finally, the noise amplified after the previous two steps is suppressed by using wavelet domain denoising based on threshold processing. The comparison of experimental results shows that the proposed approach of underwater image enhancement can correct the color imbalance and is especially suitable for processing underwater color images that have nonuniform lighting.