Color Correction and Local Contrast Enhancement for Underwater Image Enhancement

Underwater images suffer from various quality degradation problems such as color cast, low contrast, and blurred details. To solve these issues, a novel underwater image enhancement method that can implement color correction, detail sharpening, and contrast enhancement in stages. In particular, the proposed method combines multi-channel color compensation with color correction. It solves detail blurring and low contrast by the Gaussian differential pyramid and the local contrast enhancement of contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization, respectively. The proposed method mainly includes color compensation, color correction, detail sharpening, and contrast enhancement. Qualitative and quantitative comparisons demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively remove the blur of the image, realize the color correction, and significantly improve the clarity of the image.