Beyond Single Reference for Training: Underwater Image Enhancement via Comparative Learning

• Published in: IEEE transactions on circuits and systems for video technology Vol. 33; no. 6; pp. 2561 - 2576
• Main Authors: Li, Kunqian, Wu, Li, Qi, Qi, Liu, Wenjie, Gao, Xiang, Zhou, Liqin, Song, Dalei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.06.2023; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: blind image quality assessment; comparative learning; convolutional neural network; Deep learning; Electromagnetic absorption; Generators; Image degradation; Image enhancement; Oceans; Semi-supervised learning; Task analysis; Training; Underwater; Underwater image enhancement; Visualization
• ISSN: 1051-8215; 1558-2205
• DOI: 10.1109/TCSVT.2022.3225376

Due to the wavelength-dependent light absorption and scattering, the raw underwater images are usually inevitably degraded. Underwater image enhancement (UIE) is of great importance for underwater observation and operation. Data-driven methods, such as deep learning-based UIE approaches, tend to be more applicable to real underwater scenarios. However, the training of deep models is limited by the extreme scarcity of underwater images with enhancement references, resulting in their poor performance in dynamic and diverse underwater scenes. As an alternative, enhancement reference achieved by volunteer voting alleviate the sample shortage to some extent. Since such artificially acquired references are not veritable ground truth, they are far from complete and accurate to provide correct and rich supervision for the enhancement model training. Beyond training with single reference, we propose the first comparative learning framework for UIE problem, namely CLUIE-Net, to learn from multiple candidates of enhancement reference. This new strategy also supports semi-supervised learning mode. Besides, we propose a regional quality-superiority discriminative network (RQSD-Net) as an embedded quality discriminator for the CLUIE-Net. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of RQSD-Net and the comparative learning strategy for UIE problem. The code, models and new dataset RQSD-UI are available at: https://justwj.github.io/CLUIE-Net.html/ .