• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 1998.05a
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• pp.351-358
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• 1998

This paper deals with the underwater image transmission system which includes in AUV(Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) Project(that is VORAM(Vehicle for Ocean Research And Monitoring)), developed by KIMM for survey and investigation of a sea-bed through transmitting the underwater image to the mother ship. The system presented in this paper consists of a transducer which has a 136KHz center frequency and it's 10KHz bandwidth, pre-amplifier, $\pi$/4 QPSK(Quadreature Phase Shift Keying) modulation/demodulation method, image compressing method using JPEG technique and modified Stop & protocol. The experimental results of the system is verified to a high performance with 9600 bps for transmitting the underwater image through the basin test. The results of test are also verified which allows to desirable transmission performance compared with the existing developed system and the possibility to put the practical use of survey and investigation. And, the viterbi coding and adaptive equalizer for cancelling the multipath effect are developing for more effective image transmission system. Also, these technique will very effectively adapt to realtime image transmission system.

• International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.38-45
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• 2007

We propose a preprocessing method for removing floating particles from underwater images based on an analysis of the image features. We compared baseline JPEG and wavelet codec methods to determine the method best suited for underwater images. The proposed preprocessing method enhanced the compression ratio and resolution, and provided an efficient means of compressing the images. The wavelet codec method yielded better compression ratios and image resolutions. The results suggest that the wavelet codec method linked with the proposed preprocess method provides an efficient codec processor and transmission system for underwater images that are used for searches and transmitted via ultrasonic communications.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.389-394
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• 2018

Remotely operated vehicle(ROV) and autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV) have been used for underwater surveys, underwater exploration, resource harvesting, offshore plant maintenance and repair, and underwater construction. It is hard for people to work in the deep sea. Therefore, we need a vision control system of underwater submersible that can replace human eyes. However, many people have difficulty in developing a deep-sea image control system due to the deep sea special environment such as high pressure, brine, waterproofing and communication. In this paper, we will develop an Ethernet based remote image control system that can control the image mounted on ROV.

• Journal of Conservation Science
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.14-32
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• 2022

Underwater photographing and image recording are essential for pre-excavation survey and during excavation in underwater archaeology. Unlike photographing on land, all underwater images suffer various quality degradations such as shape distortions, color shift, blur, low contrast, high noise levels and so on. Outcome is very often heavily photographing equipment and photographer dependent. Excavation schedule, weather conditions, and water conditions can put burdens on divers. Usable images are very limited compared to the efforts. In underwater archaeological study in very turbid water such as in the Yellow Sea (between mainland China and the Korean peninsula), underwater photographing is very challenging. In this study, off-site image distortion and color compensation techniques using an image processing/analysis software is investigated as an alternative image quality enhancement method. As sample images, photographs taken during the excavation of 800-year-old Taean Mado Shipwrecks in the Yellow Sea in 2008-2010 were mainly used. Significant enhancement in distortion and color compensation of archived images were obtained by simple post image processing using image processing/analysis software (PicMan) customized for given view ports, lenses and cameras with and without optical axis offsets. Post image processing is found to be very effective in distortion and color compensation of both recent and archived images from various photographing equipment models and configurations. Merits and demerit of in-situ, distortion and color compensated photographing with sophisticated equipment and conventional photographing equipment, which requires post image processing, are compared.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.137-145
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• 2012

Recent developments in underwater image recognition methods have received large attention by the ocean engineering researchers. In this paper, an improved bi-dimensional empirical mode decomposition (BEMD) approach is employed to decompose the given underwater image into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) and residual. We developed a joint algorithm based on BEMD and Canny operator to extract multi-pixel edge features at multiple scales in IMFs sub-images. So the multiple pixel edge extraction is an advantage of our approach; the other contribution of this method is the realization of the bi-dimensional sifting process, which is realized utilizing regional-based operators to detect local extreme points and constructing radial basis function for curve surface interpolation. The performance of the multi-pixel edge extraction algorithm for processing underwater image is demonstrated in the contrast experiment with both the proposed method and the phase congruency edge detection.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.840-866
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• 2014

Visibility in underwater images is usually poor because of the attenuation of light in the water that causes low contrast and color variation. In this paper, a new approach for underwater image quality improvement is presented. The proposed method aims to improve underwater image contrast, increase image details, and reduce noise by applying a new method of using contrast stretching to produce two different images with different contrasts. The proposed method integrates the modification of the image histogram in two main color models, RGB and HSV. The histograms of the color channel in the RGB color model are modified and remapped to follow the Rayleigh distribution within certain ranges. The image is then converted to the HSV color model, and the S and V components are modified within a certain limit. Qualitative and quantitative analyses indicate that the proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in terms of contrast, details, and noise reduction. The image color also shows much improvement.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.23-27
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• 2024

Underwater images are typically degraded due to color distortion, light absorption, scattering, and noise from artificial light sources. Restoration of these images is an essential task in many underwater applications. In this paper, we propose a two-phase deep learning-based method, Underwater Deep Curve Estimation (UWDCE), designed to effectively enhance the quality of underwater images. The first phase involves a white balancing and color correction technique to compensate for color imbalances. The second phase introduces a novel deep learning model, UWDCE, to learn the mapping between the color-corrected image and its best-fitting curve parameter maps. The model operates iteratively, applying light-enhancement curves to achieve better contrast and maintain pixel values within a normalized range. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method, producing higher-quality images compared to state-of-the-art methods.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.19-29
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• 2008

Underwater acoustic(UWA) communication is one of the most difficult field in terms of severe channel environments such as multipath propagation, high temporal and spatial variability of channel conditions. Therefore, it is important to model and analyze the characteristics of underwater acoustic channel such as multipath propagation, transmission loss, reverberation, and ambient noise. In this paper, UWA communication channel is modeled with a ray tracing method and applied to image transmission. Quadrature phase shift keying(QPSK) and multichannel decision feedback equalizer(DFE) are utilized as phase-coherent modulation method and equalization technique, respectively. The objective is to improve the performance of the image transmission using vertical sensor array instead of single sensor in the viewpoint of bit error rate(BER), constellation diagram, and received image quality.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2020

In this paper, we introduce the methodology that utilizes deep learning-based front-end to enhance underwater feature matching. Both optical camera and sonar are widely applicable sensors in underwater research, however, each sensor has its own weaknesses, such as light condition and turbidity for the optic camera, and noise for sonar. To overcome the problems, we proposed the opti-acoustic transformation method. Since feature detection in sonar image is challenging, we converted the sonar image to an optic style image. Maintaining the main contents in the sonar image, CNN-based style transfer method changed the style of the image that facilitates feature detection. Finally, we verified our result using cosine similarity comparison and feature matching against the original optic image.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.331-351
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• 2021

Underwater images are very much different from images taken on land, due to the presence of a higher disturbance ratio caused by the presence of water medium between the camera and the target object. These distortions and noises result in unclear details and reduced quality of the output image. An underwater image restoration method is proposed in this paper, which uses blurriness information, background light neutralization information, and red-light intensity to estimate depth. The transmission map is then estimated using the derived depth map, by considering separate attenuation coefficients for direct and backscattered signals. The estimated transmission map and estimated background light are then used to recover the scene radiance. Qualitative and quantitative analysis have been used to compare the performance of the proposed method against other state-of-the-art restoration methods. It has been shown that the proposed method can yield good quality restored underwater images. The proposed method has also been evaluated using different qualitative metrics, and results have shown that method is highly capable of restoring underwater images with different conditions. The results are significant and show the applicability of the proposed method for underwater image restoration work.