ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES Abstract

The underwater image processing area has received considerable attention within the last decades, showing important achievements. The underwater images are essentially characterized by their poor visibility because light is exponentially attenuated as it travels in the water and the scenes result poorly contrasted and hazy. When we go deeper,colors drop off one by one depending on their wavelenghth, blue color travels the longest in the water due to its shortest wavelength, making the underwater images to be dominated essentially by blue color. In summary,the images suffer from limited range visibility, low contrast, non uniform lighting, blurring, color diminished (bluish appearance) and noise. In order to improve the perception, underwater images are post processed to enhance the quality of the image.

In this project, a denoising method is used for removing additive noise present in the underwater images. Image denoising using the wavelet transform has been attracting much attention. Wavelet based approach provides a particularly useful method for image denoising when the preservation of image features in the scene is of importance. In the proposed denoising method, first homomorphic filtering is used for correcting non uniform illumination, and then anisotropic filtering is used for smoothing. After smoothing, wavelet subband threshold with Modified BayesShrink function is applied. The whole of the algorithm used in this project is to be coded in MATLAB. A GUI is to be developed in MATLAB to showcase the processed image after every step.

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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES CHAPTER 1 1.1 INTRODUCTION

Underwater images are essentially characterized by their poor visibility because light is exponentially attenuated as it travels in the water and the scenes result poorly contrasted and hazy. Light attenuation limits the visibility distance at about twenty meters in clear water and five meters or less in turbid water. The light attenuation process is caused by absorption and scattering. The absorption and scattering process of the light in water influence the overall performance of underwater imaging systems. Forward scattering generally leads to blurring of the image features. On the other hand, backscattering generally limits the contrast of the images. Absorption and scattering effects are not only due to the water itself but also due to the components such as dissolved organic matter[4]. The visibility range can be increased with artificial illumination of light on the object but it produces non-uniform of light on the surface of the object and producing a bright spot in the center of the image with poorly illuminated area surrounding it. The amount of light is reduced when we go deeper, colors drop off depending on their wavelengths. The blue color travels the longest in the water due to its shortest wavelength[2]. Underwater image suffers from limited range visibility, low contrast, non-uniform lighting, blurring, bright artifacts, color diminished and noise. In this project, wavelet based image denoising technique is used for removing additive noise in the underwater images. Before applying the wavelet shrinkage function, first homomorphic filtering is used to correct non-uniform illumination of light. Homomorphic filter simultaneously normalizes the brightness across an image and increases contrast. The homomorphic filtering performs in the frequency domain and it adopts the illumination and reflectance model. After correcting non uniform illumination using homomorphic filtering, anisotropic filtering is used to smooth the image in homogeneous area but preserve image features and enhance them. Finally, applying wavelet denoising technique to denoise the image. Wavelet based image denoising techniques are necessary to remove random additive Gaussian noise while retaining as much as possible the important image features. The main objective of these types of random noise removal is to suppress the noise while preserving the original image details. Especially for the case of additive white Gaussian noise a number of techniques using wavelet-based thresholding have been proposed. In the recent years there has been a fair amount of research on wavelet thresholding and threshold selection for image

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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES

denoising, because wavelet provides an appropriate basis for separating noisy signal from the image signal.

1.2 Literature survey Problems in underwater images

A major difficulty to process underwater images comes from light attenuation. Light attenuation limits the visibility distance, at about twenty meters in clear water and five meters or less in turbid water. The light attenuation process is caused by the absorption (which removes light energy) and scattering (which changes the direction of light path)[.

Absorption and scattering effects are due to the water itself and to other components such as dissolved organic matter or small observable floating particles[4]. Not only the amount of light is reduced when we go deeper but also colors drop off one by one depending on the wavelength of the colors. Red color disappears at the depth of 3m. Secondly, orange color starts disappearing while we go further. At the depth of 5m,the orange color is lost. Thirdly most of the yellow goes off at the depth of 10m and finally the green and purple disappear at further depth[2]. This is shown diagrammatically in Figure 1.1. The blue color travels the longest in the water due to its shortest wavelength. This is reason which makes the underwater images having been dominated only by blue color. In addition to excessive amount of blue color, the blur images contain low brightness and low contrast.

Figure 1.1 Color appearance in underwater In this project, a denoising method is used for removing additive noise present in the underwater images. Image denoising using the wavelet transform has been attracting much
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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES

attention. Wavelet based approach provides a particularly useful method for image denoising when the preservation of image features in the scene is of importance[6]. Wavelet analysis is an exciting new method for solving difficult problems in mathematics, physics, and engineering, with modern applications as diverse as wave propagation, data compression, signal processing, image processing, pattern recognition, computer graphics, the detection of aircraft and submarines and other medical image technology. Wavelets allow complex information such as music, speech, images and patterns to be decomposed into elementary forms at different positions and scales and subsequently reconstructed with high precision. Signal transmission is based on transmission of a series of numbers. The series representation of a function is important in all types of signal transmission. The wavelet representation of a function is a new technique. Wavelet transform of a function is the improved version of Fourier transform. Fourier transform is a powerful tool for analyzing the components of a stationary signal. But it is failed for analyzing the non stationary signal where as wavelet transform allows the components of a non-stationary signal to be analyzed. In 1982 Jean Morlet a French geophysicist, introduced the concept of a `wavelet'. The wavelet means small wave and the study of wavelet transform is a new tool for seismic signal analysis. Immediately, Alex Grossmann theoretical physicists studied inverse formula for the wavelet transform. The joint collaboration of Morlet and Grossmann yielded a detailed mathematical study of the continuous wavelet transforms and their various applications, of course without the realization that similar results had already been obtained in 1950's by Calderon, Littlewood, Paley and Franklin. However, the rediscovery of the old concepts provided a new method for decomposing a function or a signal.

Some Advantages of Wavelet Theory

a) One of the main advantages of wavelets is that they offer a simultaneous localization in time and frequency domain. b) The second main advantage of wavelets is that, using fast wavelet transform, it is computationally very fast. c) Wavelets have the great advantage of being able to separate the fine details in a signal. Very small wavelets can be used to isolate very fine details in a signal, while very large wavelets can identify coarse details. d) A wavelet transform can be used to decompose a signal into component wavelets.

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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES

e) In wavelet theory, it is often possible to obtain a good approximation of the given function f by using only a few coefficients which is the great achievement in compare to Fourier transform. f) It can often compress or de-noise a signal without appreciable degradation.

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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES Chapter 2 2.1 Objective of the project

- To correct non uniform illumination and to enhance contrasts in the image. - To suppress noise which is inherent in underwater images. - To smooth the images while preserving the edges in the image. - Suppressing the predominant blue color by equalizing the RGB channels.

2.2 Block Diagram

Figure 2.1 shows the block schematic of proposed project

Input Image

Conversion from RGB to YCbCr

Homomorphic Filtering

Anisotropic Filtering

Denoising

Conversion from YCbCr to RGB

Equalising Color Mean

Enhanced & denoised image

Figure 2.1 block schematic of proposed project

2.2.1 Conversion from RGB to YCbCr

This color space conversion allows us to work only on one channel instead of processing the three RGB channels. In YCbCr color space we process only the luminance channel (Y) corresponding to intensity component (gray scale mage). This step speeds up the processing avoiding to process each time each RGB channels[4]. Conversion from RGB to YCbCr: Y=0.299(R-G) + G + 0.114(B-G) Cb=0.564(B-Y) Cr=0.713(R-Y)
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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES 2.2.2 Homomorphic Filtering

The homomorphic filtering is used to correct non uniform illumination and to enhance contrasts in the image. It is a frequency filtering, preferred to others techniques because it corrects non uniform lighting and sharpens the edges at the same time. Homomorphic filter is used for image enhancement. It simultaneously normalizes the brightness across an image and increases contrast. Here homomorphic filtering is used to remove multiplicative noise. Illumination and reflectance are not separable, but their approximate locations in the frequency domain may be located. Since illumination and reflectance combine multiplicatively, the components are made additive by taking the logarithm of the image intensity, so that these multiplicative components of the image can be separated linearly in the frequency domain. Illumination variations can be thought of as a multiplicative noise, and can be reduced by filtering in the log domain [4]. To make the illumination of an image more even, the high frequency components are increased and low-frequency components are decreased, because the high frequency components are assumed to represent mostly the reflectance in the scene (the amount of light reflected off the object in the scene), whereas the low frequency components are assumed to represent mostly the illumination in the scene. That is, high-pass filtering is used to suppress low frequencies and amplify high frequencies, in the log-intensity domain. The basic nature of the image f(x,y) may be characterized by two components: 1. The amount of source light incident on the scene being viewed, and 2. The amount of light reflected by the objects in the scene. These portions of light are called the illumination and reflectance components, and are denoted i(x,y) and r(x,y) respectively. The functions i and r combine multiplicatively to give the image function f (x,y)=i(x,y).r(x,y) where 0< i(x,y)<infinity and 0<r(x,y)<1 We cannot easily use the above product to operate separately on the frequency components of illumination and reflection because the Fourier transform of the product of two functions is not separable; that is F[(x,y)]F[i(x,y)].F[r(x,y)] However, suppose that we define z(x,y)= ln (x,y) = ln i(x,y)+ ln r(x,y) Now applying the fourier transform for the above equation results F[z(x,y)] = F[ln (x,y)]

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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES

= F{ln i(x,y)}+F{ln r(x,y)} or Z(u,v) =Fi(u,v) + Fr(u,v) where Z, Fi and Fr are the Fourier transforms of z, ln i and ln r respectively. The function Z represents the Fourier transform of the sum of two images: a low frequency illumination image and a high frequency reflectance image. If we now apply a filter with a transfer function that suppresses low frequency components and enhances high frequency components, then we can suppress the illumination component and enhance the reflectance component. Thus S(u,v) =H(u,v)Z(u,v) = H(u,v)Fi(u,v) +H(u,v) Fr(u,v)

where S is the Fourier transform of the result with

H(u,v)= (rH-rL)(1-exp(-(u2+v2)/2
2

))+rL

where rH = 2.5 and rL = 0.5 are the maximum and minimum coefficients values and a factor which controls the cutoff frequency. These parameters are selected empirically.

Computations of the inverse Fourier transform to comeback in the spatial domain and then taking the exponent to obtain the filtered image.

2.2.3 Anisotropic Filtering

These filters smooths the image in homogeneous area, preserves image features and enhance them. It reduces the blurring effect. It follows an algorithm to calculate nearest-neighbour differences and diffusion coefficient to modify the pixel value (proposed by Perona and Malik [3]). This algorithm is automatic so it uses constant parameters selected manually. Computation of the nearest-neighbour differences and computation of the diffusion coefficient in the four directions North, South, East, West. Many possibilities exist for this calculation, the easiest way is as follows:
NIi,j = Ii-1,j - Ii,j, SIi,j = Ii+1,j - Ii,j, EIi,j = Ii,j+1 - Ii,j, WIi,j = Ii,j-1 - Ii,j,

cNi,j = g(|

NIi,j|)

cSi,j = g(| SIi,j|) cEi,j = g(| cWi,j = g(|

EIi,j|) WIi,j|)

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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES

where the function g is defined as: g(|

I|) =
SI

and with K set to 0.1.

Modification of the pixel value using below equation

Ii,j = Ii,j+ [cN .

With 0

NI

+ cS .

+ cE .

EI

+ cW .

WI ]i,j

2.2.5 Denoising
Wavelet based image denoising techniques are necessary to remove random additive Gaussian noise while retaining as much as possible the important image features. The main objective of these types of random noise removal is to suppress the noise while preserving the original image details. In addition to scattering and absorption effects, macroscopic floating particles producing images of the size of a pixel can be present as well: it may be, for instance, sand raised by the motion of a diver, or small plankton particles. These particles are part of the scene, but cause generally unwanted signal. We see them as an additive noise, of distribution clearly not Gaussian yet still reasonably similar. Especially for the case of additive white Gaussian noise a number of techniques using wavelet-based thresholding have been proposed. In the recent years there has been a fair amount of research on wavelet thresholding and threshold selection for image denoising [1], because wavelet provides an appropriate basis for separating noisy signal from the image signal. Image denoising techniques are necessary to remove such random additive noises while retaining as much as possible the important signal features. The main objective of these types of random noise removal is to suppress the noise while preserving the original image details. Statistical filters like Average filter, Wiener filter can be used for removing such noises but the wavelet based denoising techniques proved better results than these filters. The image f is corrupted by independent and identically distributed zero mean, white Gaussian noise nij with standard deviation i.e. nij ~ N(0, 2). The goal is to estimate the signal f from the noisy observations gij=fij+ nij such that the Mean Square Error (MSE) is minimum. To achieve this the gij is transformed into wavelet domain, which decomposes the gij into many subbands, which separates the signal into so many frequency bands[5]. Due to the decomposition of an image ,the original image is transformed into four pieces which is normally labeled as LL, LH, HL and HH as in the schematic depicted in figure 2.2a.
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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES

The LL subband can be further decomposed into four subbands labeled as LL2, LH2, HL2 and HH2 as shown in figure 2.2b.

(a)one level

(b)two level Figure 2.2 Image decomposition using wavelet transform The LL piece is the most like original picture and so is called the approximation. The remaining pieces are called detailed components. The transform alternately processes the rows and columns of the image by applying high- and low-pass filters (figure 2.3). These filters separate high- and low-frequency areas of the image. The result is a smaller version of the original image and the three groups that contain the highest horizontal, vertical, and diagonal frequencies present in the image. These groups are referred to as sub-bands. This decomposition process is recursively applied on the smaller image (figure 2.4).
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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES

Figure 2.3 Wavelet decomposition process[7]

Figure 2.4 Repeated decomposition[7] The small coefficients in the subbands are dominated by noise, while coefficients with large absolute value carry more signal information than noise. Replacing noisy coefficients (small coefficients below certain value) by zero and an inverse wavelet transform may lead to
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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES

reconstruction that has lesser noise. Normally Hard Thresholding and Soft Thresholding techniques are used for such denoising process.

2.2.5 Conversion from YCbCr to RGB

After the luminance channel has been processed, so to regain colors we convert back the image the RGB space, and cut out the symmetric extension part of the image to recover the image with original size. The conversion formula from YCbCr to RGB are R = Y + 1.402 (CR - 128) G = Y 0.34414 (CB -128) 0.71414 (CR -128) B = Y + 1.772 (CB - 128)

2.2.6 Equalizing the color mean

This step enables to suppress the predominant color (blue and green) by equalizing the RGB channel means. Histogram equalization is implemented on all the three RGB channels. The intensities are better distributed on the histogram. Histogram equalization is a technique for adjusting image intensities to enhance contrast.Let f be a given image represented as a mr by mc matrix of integer pixel intensities ranging from 0 to L 1. L is the number of possible intensity values, often 256. Let normalized histogram of f with a bin for each possible intensity. So Pn = number of pixels with intensity n / total number of pixels n = 0, 1, ..., L 1. The histogram equalized image g will be defined by gi,j =floor((L-1) where floor() rounds down to the nearest integer. Pn denote the

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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES Chapter 3 3.1 Results

A test image(color image) as shown in Figure 3.1 is considered for processing. This image has low contrast, blue green effect (predominant in blue color ) non uniform lighting and noise. The test image was converted from RGB color space to YCbCr color space. This color space conversion allows to work only on luminance channel(Y) corresponding to intensity component (gray scale image ).The Y channel shown in fig 3.2 is used for further processing. The test image considered has low contrast and non uniform illumination. Homomorphic filtering eliminates all these problems and at the same time it also sharpens the edges of the image. To make the illumination of the test image more clear high frequency components are increased and low frequency components are decreased. The output in Figure 3.3 has uniform illumination and contrast when compared to test image.

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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES CONCLUSION

In this project, wavelet based image denoising technique is used for removing additive noise in the underwater images. Before applying the wavelet shrinkage function, first homomorphic filtering is used to correct non-uniform illumination of light. Homomorphic filter simultaneously normalizes the brightness across an image and increases contrast. After correcting non uniform illumination using homomorphic filtering, anisotropic filtering is used to smooth the image in homogeneous area but preserve image features and enhance them. Finally, applying wavelet denoising technique to denoise the image. Wavelet based image denoising techniques are necessary to remove random additive Gaussian noise while retaining as much as possible the important image features. The whole of the algorithm used in this project is to be coded in MATLAB. A GUI is to be developed in MATLAB to showcase the processed image after every step.

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ENHANCEMENT OF UNDER WATER IMAGES REFERENCES

[1] David L.Donoho, De-Noising by Soft-Thresholding, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 613-626, May 1995. [2] Kashif Iqbal, Rosalina Abdul Salam, Azam Osman and Abdullah Zawawi Talib Underwater Image Enhancement Using an Integrated Colour Model [3] Pietro Perona and Jitendra Malik, Scale Space and Edge Detection using Anisotropic Diffusion, IEEE transactions on Pattern Analysis and machine Intelligence, vol. 12, No. 7, pp. 629-639,July 1990. [4] Stephane Brazeille ,Isabella Quido ,Luc Jaulin, Jean Phillepe Malkasse, Automatic Underwater Image Pre Processing,2006. [5] S. Grace Chang,Bin Yu and Martin Vetterli, Adaptive Wavelet Thresholding for Image Denoising and Compression, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Vol. 9, No. 9, pp. 1532-1546,september 2000. [6] Underwater Image Denoising Using Adaptive Wavelet Subband Thresholding,IEEE paper,2010 [7] U Mapen Barry ,Image Enhancements in the Wavelet Domain,2008

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