Water Caustic

Water caustics, the complex light patterns created by refraction through a wavy water surface, significantly degrade the quality of underwater imagery and hinder accurate seafloor mapping. Current research focuses on developing robust methods for removing or correcting these distortions, employing techniques such as recurrent Gaussian splatting, deep learning-based pixel classification and correction, and neural radiance fields to improve image quality and enable more accurate 3D reconstruction. These advancements are crucial for various applications, including marine engineering, geology, and archaeology, where high-resolution underwater imaging is essential. The development of large, annotated datasets is also a key area of focus to improve the training and generalization of these algorithms.