Investigation of Chromatic Aberration and Its Influence on the Processing of Underwater Imagery

The number of researchers utilising imagery for the 3D reconstruction of underwater natural (e.g., reefs) and man-made structures (e.g., shipwrecks) is increasing. Often, the same procedures and software solutions are used for processing the images as in-air without considering additional aberrations that can be caused by the change of the medium from air to water. For instance, several publications mention the presence of chromatic aberration (CA). The aim of this paper is to investigate CA effects in low-cost camera systems (several GoPro cameras) operated in an underwater environment. We found that underwater and in-air distortion profiles differed by more than 1000 times in terms of maximum displacement and in terms of curvature. Moreover, significant CA effects were found in the underwater profiles that did not exist in-air. Furthermore, the paper investigates the effect of adjustment constraints imposed on the underwater self-calibration and the reliability of the interior orientation parameters. The analysis of the precision shows that in-air RMS values are just due to random errors. In contrast, the underwater calibration RMS values are 3x-6x higher than the exterior orientation parameter (EOP) precision, so these values contain both random error and the systematic effects from the CA. The accuracy assessment shows significant differences.