Underwater Illumination Image Fusion Method Based on Color Correction

We proposed a color-corrected underwater illumination image fusion method based on color correction to address uneven color shifts, low contrast, and blurred details in underwater illumination images. First, we exploited the pixel correlation between image channels to compensate for the red channel. Then, based on the color-corrected image, a sharpness-enhanced image is obtained using a nonlinear unsharp masking technique, and a global stretching map is obtained using a restricted histogram with Rayleigh distribution. Finally, we generated the fused image using a multi-scale fusion strategy. The experimental results on a self-built dataset (RULI) showed that the proposed method could remove the inhomogeneous scattering interference of mixed illumination in the imaging process and substantially improve the detail sharpness of the image. The mean values of the image quality assessment metrics UIQM and IE were 4.7399 and 7.7617, respectively, better than those of related algorithms in the existing literature.