Underwater image enhancement via dark channel prior and luminance adjustment

Underwater images are degraded mainly by light scattering and color distortion. Light scattering occurs because the light is reflected and deflected multiple times by the suspended particles in the water before reaching the camera. Color distortion is caused due to the absorption degrees vary according to the light wavelength. At last, the underwater images are dominated by a bluish tone. In this paper, we propose a novel underwater image enhancement approach based on dark channel prior and luminance adjustment. The dehazed underwater image obtained by dark channel prior characterizes with low brightness. Then, we utilize a novel luminance adjustment method to enhance image contrast. The enhanced image shows improved global contrast and better preserved image details and edges. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method compared to the state-of-the-art methods.