Underwater image enhancement: a comprehensive review, recent trends, challenges and applications

The mysteries of deep-sea ecosystems can be unlocked to reveal new sources, for developing medical drugs, food and energy resources, and products of renewable energy. Research in the area of underwater image processing has increased significantly in the last decade. This is primarily due to the dependence of human beings on the valuable resources existing underwater. Effective work of exploring the underwater environment is achievable by having excellent methods for underwater image enhancement. The work presented in this article highlights the survey of underwater image enhancement algorithms. This work presents an overview of various underwater image enhancement techniques and their broad classifications. The methods under each classification are briefly discussed. Underwater datasets required for performing experiments are summarized from the available literature. Attention is also drawn towards various evaluation metrics required for the quantitative assessment of underwater images and recent areas of application in the domain.