Underwater Image Enhancement

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Overview

Underwater image enhancement studies how to recover useful color, contrast, and detail from images degraded by wavelength-dependent absorption, scattering, haze, and noise. Methods range from physics-based color and transmission correction to CNNs, Transformers, Mamba models, frequency-domain processing, and lightweight lookup tables; newer work also uses depth, polarization, language, and degradation cues. Researchers evaluate image quality on benchmarks such as UIEB, LSUI, and EUVP, increasingly asking whether enhancement also improves detection, segmentation, retrieval, and consistent 3D reconstruction. A central tension is whether explicit physical models improve real-world reliability or whether learned priors and better data generalize more effectively, especially when paired ground truth is scarce and visual quality can conflict with downstream perception.

Latest papers

CardsList

38 papers6 papers in the last four weeks, up 100% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Multi-level Constrained Learning for Underwater Image Enhancement

    Oct 29, 2026Wangtao Bao, Liping Xie, Kanjian Zhang +1Underwater Image EnhancementImage Restoration

    Key Laboratory of Measurement and Control of Complex Systems of Engineering, Ministry of Education, School of Automation, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China · Advanced Ocean Institute of Southeast University, Nantong 226010, China

  2. Computational imaging through turbid, bubbly and flowing water near the telescope

    Oct 23, 2026Alexander Ingold, Sabina D. Menon, Aadhi Umamageswaran +4Computational ImagingUnderwater Imaging

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA · U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Remote Sensing Division, Washington DC 20375, USA. · Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA.

  3. Rethinking Underwater Image Enhancement: Learning through Text-Guided Degradation Curriculum

    Oct 21, 2026Hongri Tian, Wenxue Li, Tian Ye +7Underwater Image EnhancementImage Restoration

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China. · China Geological Survey, Beijing, China. · Director of Applied Science, Amazon.com, Inc., U.S.. +1

  4. Physics-Shaped, Not Physical: Auditing Physics-Guided Underwater Image Restoration

    Oct 14, 2026Mochamad Rizal Fauzan, Irgi SuryaPhysics-Guided Image RestorationImage Restoration

    College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan

  5. PolUR: Polarization Aware Multimodal Degradation Perception for Underwater Image Restoration

    Oct 13, 2026Wenshuo Zhang, Xiangyue Zhang, Junlin Li +5Image RestorationUnderwater Image Enhancement

    Faculty of Robot Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China

  6. State-Isolated Vision Mamba via Update-Tendency Routing for Underwater Image Enhancement

    Oct 9, 2026Yan Luo, Laibin Chang, Zefan Feng +3Visual SSMsUnderwater Image Enhancement

  7. Physics-Guided Spectral Distillation for Underwater Image Enhancement on Resource-Constrained Devices

    Sep 28, 2026Yifan Chen, Kai He, Ye Zheng +3Image EnhancementUnderwater Image Enhancement

    College of Future Information Technology, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China · Institute of Artificial Intelligence (TeleAI), China Telecom, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai 264209, China

  8. PIC-UIE: Predicting Image-Adaptive Corrections for Lightweight Underwater Image Enhancement

    Sep 27, 2026Cunhao Zhu, Dongliang Xu, Xiangtao Kong +3Image EnhancementUnderwater Image Enhancement

    Shandong University · School of Airspace Science and Engineering, Shandong University · The Hong Kong Polytechnic University +2

  9. QMSR: Query-Conditioned Mask-wise Expert Routing for Robust Open-Vocabulary Underwater Object Retrieval

    Sep 16, 2026Fuming Zhang, Dongyue Huang, Junjie Wen +1Underwater Image EnhancementMixture of Experts

    School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798 · Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong

  10. 3D-USE: From Image-Level to Scene-Level Underwater Enhancement

    Aug 28, 2026Jieyu Yuan, Yuanlin Zhang, Jihong Li +3Underwater Image EnhancementUnderwater 3D Reconstruction

    College of Computer Science, Nankai University · NKIARI, Shenzhen Futian · School of Automation, Southeast University +1

  11. Dynamic SpectraFormer for Ultra-High-Definition Underwater Image Enhancement

    Aug 19, 2026Zhiqiang Hu, Tao Yu, Shouren Huang +1Underwater Image EnhancementUnderwater Imaging

    Research Institute for Science & Technology, Tokyo University of Science · Tokyo Institute of Technology

  12. Underwater Color Restoration with Vanishing Uncertainty

    Aug 16, 2026Grigory Solomatov, Derya AkkaynakUnderwater ImagingUnderwater Image Enhancement

    Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel · Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences, Eilat, Israel

  13. VLMs Win a Systematic Evaluation of Underwater Image Reconstruction

    Aug 11, 2026Sara Aghajanzadeh, Yingxue Wang, Ieva Bagdonaviciute +1VLM EvaluationUnderwater Image Enhancement

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  14. ππ-SUB: A Physics-Informed Synthetic Underwater Benchmark Dataset for Underwater Image Enhancement

    Aug 11, 2026Namritha Lasyapriya Maddali, Rajini Makam, Suresh Sundaram +1Underwater Image EnhancementUnderwater Imaging

    Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. · Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

  15. CoRe-UIE: Rethinking Coexisting and Region-wise Degradation for Underwater Image Enhancement

    Aug 10, 2026Weifeng Kong, Chenghao Xu, Lin Chen +2Underwater Image EnhancementMixture of Experts

    Hohai University Jiangsu, China

  16. Degradation-Guided Underwater Image Restoration with Task-Oriented Latent Control

    Aug 9, 2026Xu Zhang, Xuhui Cao, Kangzhe Yuan +5Underwater Image EnhancementUnderwater Imaging

    National Engineering Research Center for Multimedia Software, School of Computer Science, Wuhan University · School of Computer and Artificial Intelligence, Zhengzhou University · Aerospace Information Research Institute, Henan Academy of Sciences +2

  17. RPL-UIE: Reliable Prior Learning for Underwater Image Enhancement

    Jul 31, 2026Yifan Chen, Jiaming Liu, Ye Zheng +2Diffusion Models for Image RestorationUnderwater Image Enhancement

    College of Future Information Technology, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China · Institute of Artificial Intelligence (TeleAI), China Telecom, China · Faculty of Robot Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China +1

  18. DY-LUT: Depth-Aware YCbCr Lookup Tables for Real-Time Underwater Image Enhancement

    Jul 24, 2026Cunhao Zhu, Xiangtao Kong, Dongliang Xu +3Image EnhancementUnderwater Image Enhancement

    1Shandong University · 2The Hong Kong Polytechnic University · 3Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence

  19. CLUIE: Clustering-Aware Recurrent Propagation with Local Structural Compensation for Underwater Image Enhancement

    Jul 23, 2026Kui Jiang, Zefan Feng, Laibin Chang +3Underwater Image EnhancementUnderwater Imaging

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China · School of Computer Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

  20. Robust Image Processing Techniques for Construction Environment Monitoring Using Underwater Robots

    Jul 2, 2026Seunghee Yun, Geonmo Yang, Juhui Lee +3Underwater Image EnhancementUnderwater Imaging

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Inha University · Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co., Ltd · Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Inha University

  21. Real-Time Underwater Image Enhancement via Frequency-Guided Dual-Path Attention

    Jun 29, 2026Leshen Zhang, Ao Li, Ce ZhuImage EnhancementUnderwater Image Enhancement

    Glasgow College, UESTC, Chengdu, China · University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK · School of Information and Communication Engineering, UESTC, Chengdu, China

  22. A Dual-Branch Collaborative Framework for Joint Optimization of Underwater Image Enhancement and Object Detection

    Jun 14, 2026Liyuan Cao, Zheng Liu, Guanghao Liao +2Underwater Image EnhancementUnderwater Imaging

    School of Electronic and Information Engineering, University of Science and Technology Liaoning, No.189 Qianshan Middle Road, Lishan District, Anshan, 114051, Liaoning, China

  23. Fusing Transferred Priors and Physics-based Decomposition for Underwater Image Enhancement

    Jun 14, 2026Haochen Hu, Yanrui Bin, Zhengyan Zhang +3Underwater Image EnhancementUnderwater Imaging

    The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR

  24. Variational Deep Unfolding with Mamba-Based Nonlocal Modeling for Underwater Image Enhancement

    Jun 10, 2026Daniel Torres, Julia Navarro, Catalina Sbert +1Underwater Image EnhancementUnderwater Imaging

    Institute of Applied Computing and Community Code (IAC3) · Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Cra. de Valldemossa km. 7.5, E-07122 Palma, Spain

  25. RQUL-UIE: Revitalizing Quality-Unstable Labels for Underwater Image Enhancement via In-Dataset Self-Supervision

    Jun 4, 2026Haochen Hu, Yanrui Bin, Chih-yung Wen +1Diffusion Models for Image RestorationUnsupervised Image Restoration

    1The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

  26. Halo Separation-guided Underwater Multi-scale Image Restoration

    May 11, 2026Jiaxin Yang, Honglin Liu, Yongli Wang +3Underwater Image EnhancementUnderwater Imaging

    College of Information Science and Technology, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, 116000, China · College of Marine Electrical Engineering, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, 116000, China

  27. UIESNN: A Scale-Aware Spiking Network for Underwater Image Enhancement

    May 8, 2026Shuang Chen, Ruochen Li, Zihan Zhu +3Underwater Image EnhancementSpiking Neural Networks

    Computer Science Department, Durham University, UK · University of Cambridge · Institute of Biology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.

  28. UniV2D: Bridging Visual Restoration and Semantic Perception for Underwater Salient Object Detection

    May 8, 2026Laibin Chang, Shaodong Wang, Yunke Wang +4Underwater Image EnhancementUnderwater Imaging

    School of Computer Science, Wuhan University · School of Computer Science, The University of Sydney · School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology

  29. Hero-Mamba: Mamba-based Dual Domain Learning for Underwater Image Enhancement

    Apr 17, 2026Tejeswar Pokuri, Shivarth RaiUnderwater Image EnhancementUnderwater Imaging

    Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal - 576104, India

  30. Style-Decoupled Adaptive Routing Network for Underwater Image Enhancement

    Apr 14, 2026Hang Xu, Chen Long, Bing Wang +2Image EnhancementUnderwater Image Enhancement

    State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430079, China · Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China