Underwater Image Enhancement Based on Multi-Scale Fusion and Global Stretching of Dual-Model

Aimed at the two problems of color deviation and poor visibility of the underwater image, this paper proposes an underwater image enhancement method based on the multi-scale fusion and global stretching of dual-model (MFGS), which does not rely on the underwater optical imaging model. The proposed method consists of three stages: Compared with other color correction algorithms, white-balancing can effectively eliminate the undesirable color deviation caused by medium attenuation, so it is selected to correct the color deviation in the first stage. Then, aimed at the problem of the poor performance of the saliency weight map in the traditional fusion processing, this paper proposed an updated strategy of saliency weight coefficient combining contrast and spatial cues to achieve high-quality fusion. Finally, by analyzing the characteristics of the results of the above steps, it is found that the brightness and clarity need to be further improved. The global stretching of the full channel in the red, green, blue (RGB) model is applied to enhance the color contrast, and the selective stretching of the L channel in the Commission International Eclairage-Lab (CIE-Lab) model is implemented to achieve a better de-hazing effect. Quantitative and qualitative assessments on the underwater image enhancement benchmark dataset (UIEBD) show that the enhanced images of the proposed approach achieve significant and sufficient improvements in color and visibility.