Underwater Image Enhancement Using Guided Joint Bilateral Filter

The human incapability in diving in the deep ocean for a long time has increased the challenges of underwater analysis. However, the challenges contain problems like aggressive light absorption and disrupting scattering effect in the deep ocean enabling lighting problem. These days AUV (Autonomnous Underwater Vehicle) are used to acquire images in deep ocean which contains additional artificial lighting still unable to provide good and clear images. In this paper, we have focused on the underwater image enhancements techniques mainly required for sea floor exploration and navigation, underwater environment monitoring, finding possibilities for applied purposes for civil engineering and assessment of coral reefs [1]. A dehazing method from single image based on filtering. So mainly, we concentrate on the underwater image enhancement through haze removal algorithm by guided joint bilateral filter technique. Our experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has significantly improved quality of underwater images visually as well as quantifiably by enhancing the contrast of the image and reducing noise as well as artifacts in the image.