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It is generally assumed that oceanic effects, such as absorption, scattering, and turbulence, deteriorate underwater optical imaging and/or signal detection. In this paper, we present an interesting observation that slight turbidity may actually improve the performance of underwater optical imaging in the presence of occlusion. We have carried out simulations and optical experiments in underwater degraded environments to investigate this hypothesis. For simulation, the Monte Carlo method was used to analyze the influence of imaging performance under varying turbidity and occlusion conditions. Additionally, optical experiments were conducted under various turbid and partially occluded environments. We considered the effects of different parameters such as varying turbidity levels, severity of partial occlusion, number of photons, propagation distances, and imaging modality. The simulation results we performed suggest that, regardless of the variation of the imaging system and degradation parameters, slight turbidity may improve underwater imaging performance in occlusion. The optical experimental results are also in agreement with the simulation results that slightly increasing the turbidity levels may boost the image quality in the scenarios we considered. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report to theoretically analyze and experimentally validate the phenomenon that turbidity may improve underwater imaging performance in certain degraded environments.
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This content will become publicly available on June 1, 2027
Optical Sensing, Imaging, and Detection in Turbid and Degraded Environment (Keynote Address)
Optical sensing, imaging, and detection in degraded and turbid environments is a challenging problem and there are many applications. Applications include oceanography, underwater communication, imaging in fog, low light, occlusion, autonomous navigation, security, defense, surveillance, etc. Conventional sensing and imaging systems are not capable of addressing these challenges and thus dedicated hardware and algorithms are needed. Sensing and imaging in degraded environments causes light scattering and absorption which adversely affect image quality and lowers signal to noise ratio, and compromising the system performance. This Keynote Address presents an overview of multi-dimensional optical sensing and imaging systems and dedicated algorithms designed for applications in degraded environments including operation in turbid water.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2141473
- PAR ID:
- 10656107
- Publisher / Repository:
- Optica Society
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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