Enhancing Underwater Images: A Comparative Analysis of Image Processing Techniques Using UCIQE

As the technology of underwater shooting advances, the underwater image process has become necessary. For this research, five different methods have been applied to the underwater images, including white balance, Contrast enhancement, CLAHE, Global and local contrast enhancement, linear fusion and Gaussian Pyramid fusion method. The results of these different methods are compared using the method of Underwater Color Image Quality Evaluation (UCIQE). UCIQE can compute a score for each of the different outputs. The images with higher score imply better outcome of underwater image processing. The result shows that the Gaussian Pyramid fusion method has the highest score of UCIQE, which means that this method can restore the underwater images in the most efficient way.