Paper Title
Underwater Image Enhancement: An Integrated Approach

Abstract
The population across the world is increasing on a daily basis. With that also comes the increase in the demand of the resources. Over the years the seas and oceans have been viewed and proved a vital source for our sustenance. From food to transport, from energy to defense operations seas have been providing us with a perfect platform for increasing our quality of life. The full potential of this platform has still not been fully explored. Further we also need to make sure that the already existing methods are done at maximum efficiency and with extreme precaution. This calls for a complete monitoring of the underwater scenery before during and after the large scale usage of such a platform. One of the main challenges during monitoring is posed by light and scattering of light as it travels from air to water which presents us with a bluish background while studying the scenery. Added to this there is a hazy appearance in the visuals and calls for Image Enhancement techniques. In this paper, we use a method called Dark Channel Prior to remove the haze and noise caused by the bluish environment. But, this method has a tendency to darken the image. So we further use Contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) on the RGB image to improve the contrast and intensity of the image. Finally, a colour correlation technique is carried out for obtaining visually pleasing results. The experimental results provide us a favorable outcome, both subjectively and objectively, and this has helped to be even more effective in monitoring the underwater scenario. Keywords - Haze removal, Dark channel prior, CLAHE, RGB, Image Enhancement