Speckle noise suppression of range gated underwater imaging system

Hailan Li; Xia Wang; Tingzhu Bai; Weiqi Jin; Youwei Huang; Kun Ding

doi:10.1117/12.831994

2 September 2009 Speckle noise suppression of range gated underwater imaging system

Hailan Li, Xia Wang, Tingzhu Bai, Weiqi Jin, Youwei Huang, Kun Ding

Proceedings Volume 7443, Applications of Digital Image Processing XXXII; 74432A (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.831994
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2009, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Images associated with underwater imaging systems are normally degraded by the intervening water medium. The imaging instrument records not only the signal of interest, i.e., the radiance diffusely reflected from underwater target, but also the radiance scattered into the field of view by water molecule and particulates. In order to improve the system performance, range gated underwater imaging system is used to enhance image quality and visibility in turbid conditions. Range gated imaging utilizes time discrimination to improve signal-to-backscattering noise ratio by rejecting backscattered light from the medium. The range gated underwater imaging system basically consists of a pulsed laser system, a control and synchronous logics and a high-speed gated camera. Because a laser is a highly coherent light source, speckle noise results from the randomly constructive or destructive interference of the scattered light rays will appear in the images obtained from the range gated underwater imaging system. The random granular speckle noise brings great difficulty for the image processing. So the formation causes of speckle noise are discussed and several different material objects under standard light source and laser are chosen to carry out speckle noise comparative analysis. And a multidirectional morphological filtering algorithm for reducing speckle noise is proposed by using the characteristics of morphology's multi-resolution analysis and fast-computing. In order to evaluate the method objectively, equivalent number and speckle index are introduced. The experimental results demonstrate that the approach that is adopted not only can reduce the speckle noise of the image effectively but also can preserve the feature detail efficiently.

Citation Download Citation

Hailan Li, Xia Wang, Tingzhu Bai, Weiqi Jin, Youwei Huang, and Kun Ding "Speckle noise suppression of range gated underwater imaging system", Proc. SPIE 7443, Applications of Digital Image Processing XXXII, 74432A (2 September 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.831994

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available