TTC from transmission. Our method does not require
a dedicated light source nor camera calibration. The
proposed method uses the image intensity and the em-
bedded scattering effects to extract 3D distance infor-
mation from the image.
We have tested these methods using both syn-
thetic and real underwater images. The synthetic im-
ages were generated based on an underwater light
propagation model, and the real underwater images
were taken in an experimental underwater environ-
ment. The proposed method is able to accurately esti-
mate TTC in synthetic underwater images and shows
promising results for real underwater images. The dif-
ference that occurs with the real images is due to the
real natural noise and possibly due to human error in
the image capture process. Even so, the TTC estima-
tion shows a slope that follows the correct TTC val-
ues.
It is mentioned in this paper that the waterlight es-
timation outlined in section 3.2 requires an additional
user input to ensure correct waterlight is used. The red
channel prior assumption used in the waterlight esti-
mation is sometimes hindered by bright areas or ob-
jects with a reflectance similar to the waterlight. This
albedo-airlight ambiguity is an ongoing issue for vi-
sion in scattering media.
For the next step in our work, we will address this
albedo-airlight ambiguity problem in underwater vi-
sion. We aim to arrive at a solution for better wa-
terlight estimation results, which in turn will lead to
an improvedtransmission and 3D distance estimation.
Furthermore, we will examine the possibility of more
novel and improved methods for extracting 3D infor-
mation from underwater images, which can then be
applied to TTC estimation, 3D shape reconstruction,
as well as to other underwater vision applications.
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