Dynamic spectral-based underwater colour correction

Optical sensing in an underwater environment can be challenging due to the complex attenuation and scattering properties of the water. These cause colour changes which can be variant on factors such as the constituents within the water, sunlight/weather changes and distance to the object of interest. It is desirable to correct for the water's influence so as to recover a true reflectance/colour of the imaged scene. This is necessary in the application of benthic mapping where producing inter- and intra-site colour consistent images is important for classification and characterisation of these habitats. We present a new method which involves sensing the incoming irradiance to the scene from two locations above and below the water and colour correcting the image. The light is sensed in the hyperspectral domain, leading to other uses in the examination of the water column. In this paper we present colour correction in the trichromatic domain but this is equally applicable in the hyperspectral domain.