A Novel Approach to Underwater De-Scattering Based on Sparse and Low-Rank Matrix Decomposition

The images captured in turbid water suffer from severe visual degradation due to the dramatic scattering effects caused by abundant large suspended particles. This paper propose a novel underwater image de-scattering approach with low complexity, which can separate the scattering component from the image by using the sparse and low-rank matrix decomposition. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can enhance the global image contrast effectively. Additionally, this approach does not require specialized hardware or prior knowledge about the underwater environment, it is suitable for the underwater imaging system in real time.