Underwater image recovery considering polarization effects of objects

In underwater imaging scenarios, the scattering media could cause severe image degradation due to the backscatter veiling as well as signal attenuation. In this paper, we consider the polarization effect of the object, and propose a method of retrieving the object's radiance based on estimating the polarized-difference image of the target signal. We show with a real-world experiment that by additionally taking into account the polarized-difference image of the target signal, the quality of the underwater image can be effectively enhanced, which is particularly effective in the cases where both the object radiance and the backscatter contribute to the polarization, such as underwater detection of the artifact objects. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America