UCRNet: Underwater color image restoration via a polarization-guided convolutional neural network

Abstract

Underwater images always suffer from low contrast and color distortion due to the wavelength-dependent scattering and absorption effects caused by particles existing in turbid water, especially in high turbidity conditions. Based on the polarization properties of the backscattering light, polarimetric methods can estimate the intensity level of the backscattering and the transmittance of the media. Accordingly, they can separate the target signal from the undesired ones to achieve high-quality imaging. In addition, learning-based polarimetric methods are effective for gray-model image restoration, but the learning-based polarimetric technique for color image restoration has yet to be considered. In this paper, we propose a 3- dimensional convolutional neural network, which maintains the correlation of polarization information among different polarization channel images as well as embodies polarization constraints, for underwater color image restoration. The experimental results verify that the proposed solution improves the image quality (i.e., the image contrast, details, and color) and outperforms other existing methods, especially when the turbidity of scattering media is high. The proposed solution can be readily applied to practical applications and potentially realize the clear vision in other scattering media, including biomedical imaging and remote sensing.