Cargando…
A Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Images
Underwater images are often acquired in sub-optimal lighting conditions, in particular at profound depths where the absence of natural light demands the use of artificial lighting. Low-lighting images impose a challenge for both manual and automated analysis, since regions of interest can have low v...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2019
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8321153/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34460645 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jimaging5100079 |
_version_ | 1783730783586877440 |
---|---|
author | Porto Marques, Tunai Branzan Albu, Alexandra Hoeberechts, Maia |
author_facet | Porto Marques, Tunai Branzan Albu, Alexandra Hoeberechts, Maia |
author_sort | Porto Marques, Tunai |
collection | PubMed |
description | Underwater images are often acquired in sub-optimal lighting conditions, in particular at profound depths where the absence of natural light demands the use of artificial lighting. Low-lighting images impose a challenge for both manual and automated analysis, since regions of interest can have low visibility. A new framework capable of significantly enhancing these images is proposed in this article. The framework is based on a novel dehazing mechanism that considers local contrast information in the input images, and offers a solution to three common disadvantages of current single image dehazing methods: oversaturation of radiance, lack of scale-invariance and creation of halos. A novel low-lighting underwater image dataset, OceanDark, is introduced to assist in the development and evaluation of the proposed framework. Experimental results and a comparison with other underwater-specific image enhancement methods show that the proposed framework can be used for significantly improving the visibility in low-lighting underwater images of different scales, without creating undesired dehazing artifacts. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8321153 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83211532021-08-26 A Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Images Porto Marques, Tunai Branzan Albu, Alexandra Hoeberechts, Maia J Imaging Article Underwater images are often acquired in sub-optimal lighting conditions, in particular at profound depths where the absence of natural light demands the use of artificial lighting. Low-lighting images impose a challenge for both manual and automated analysis, since regions of interest can have low visibility. A new framework capable of significantly enhancing these images is proposed in this article. The framework is based on a novel dehazing mechanism that considers local contrast information in the input images, and offers a solution to three common disadvantages of current single image dehazing methods: oversaturation of radiance, lack of scale-invariance and creation of halos. A novel low-lighting underwater image dataset, OceanDark, is introduced to assist in the development and evaluation of the proposed framework. Experimental results and a comparison with other underwater-specific image enhancement methods show that the proposed framework can be used for significantly improving the visibility in low-lighting underwater images of different scales, without creating undesired dehazing artifacts. MDPI 2019-10-01 /pmc/articles/PMC8321153/ /pubmed/34460645 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jimaging5100079 Text en © 2019 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ). |
spellingShingle | Article Porto Marques, Tunai Branzan Albu, Alexandra Hoeberechts, Maia A Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Images |
title | A Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Images |
title_full | A Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Images |
title_fullStr | A Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Images |
title_full_unstemmed | A Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Images |
title_short | A Contrast-Guided Approach for the Enhancement of Low-Lighting Underwater Images |
title_sort | contrast-guided approach for the enhancement of low-lighting underwater images |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8321153/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34460645 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jimaging5100079 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT portomarquestunai acontrastguidedapproachfortheenhancementoflowlightingunderwaterimages AT branzanalbualexandra acontrastguidedapproachfortheenhancementoflowlightingunderwaterimages AT hoeberechtsmaia acontrastguidedapproachfortheenhancementoflowlightingunderwaterimages AT portomarquestunai contrastguidedapproachfortheenhancementoflowlightingunderwaterimages AT branzanalbualexandra contrastguidedapproachfortheenhancementoflowlightingunderwaterimages AT hoeberechtsmaia contrastguidedapproachfortheenhancementoflowlightingunderwaterimages |