Human-Visual-System-Inspired Underwater Image Quality Measures

Underwater images suffer from blurring effects, low contrast, and grayed out colors due to the absorption and scattering effects under the water. Many image enhancement algorithms for improving the visual quality of underwater images have been developed. Unfortunately, no well-accepted objective mea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE journal of oceanic engineering 2016-07, Vol.41 (3), p.541-551
Main Authors: Panetta, Karen, Chen Gao, Agaian, Sos
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absorption
AirAsia 8501 wreckage search
Algorithms
Brackish
colorfulness measure
contrast measure
Digital imaging
Geologic measurements
Image color analysis
Image contrast
Image edge detection
Image enhancement
Image quality
Marine
Perception
port security
Quality
Sea measurements
sharpness measure
Underwater
underwater image quality evaluation
Visual
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Summary:Underwater images suffer from blurring effects, low contrast, and grayed out colors due to the absorption and scattering effects under the water. Many image enhancement algorithms for improving the visual quality of underwater images have been developed. Unfortunately, no well-accepted objective measure exists that can evaluate the quality of underwater images similar to human perception. Predominant underwater image processing algorithms use either a subjective evaluation, which is time consuming and biased, or a generic image quality measure, which fails to consider the properties of underwater images. To address this problem, a new nonreference underwater image quality measure (UIQM) is presented in this paper. The UIQM comprises three underwater image attribute measures: the underwater image colorfulness measure (UICM), the underwater image sharpness measure (UISM), and the underwater image contrast measure (UIConM). Each attribute is selected for evaluating one aspect of the underwater image degradation, and each presented attribute measure is inspired by the properties of human visual systems (HVSs). The experimental results demonstrate that the measures effectively evaluate the underwater image quality in accordance with the human perceptions. These measures are also used on the AirAsia 8501 wreckage images to show their importance in practical applications.
ISSN:0364-9059
1558-1691
DOI:10.1109/JOE.2015.2469915