Improving The Performance of Object Detection in ‎Underwater with Advanced Deep Learning Based Noise ‎Reduction Techniques

  • Authors

    • S. Deepa Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Ramapuram, ‎Chennai, India
    • A. Umamageswari Associate Professor Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Ramapuram, ‎Chennai, India
    • Sankari A Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, ‎Ramapuram, Chennai, India
    • L. Sherin Beevi Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, RMD Engineering College, Kavaraipettai, Tamilnadu, ‎India
    • K. Raja Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Ramapuram, Chennai, ‎India
    https://doi.org/10.14419/3npw0a46

    Received date: July 22, 2025

    Accepted date: August 26, 2025

    Published date: September 4, 2025

  • Red Compensation; Dn-CNN, CLAHE; Gamma Correction; Image Sharpening; White Balancing; SIFT
  • Abstract

    In order to identify objects that could appear suspicious, this investigation suggests an extensive method that includes pre-processing, ‎enhancement, and noise elimination from submarine images. The method integrates the strengths of SIFT (Scale-Invariant Feature ‎Transform) for feature extraction, CLAHE (Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization) for enhancing underwater images to ‎accurately identify features, and DnCNN (Deep Convolutional Neural Network) for effective noise removal through dedicated training. The ‎method incorporates edge enhancement, color correction, brightness modulation, and preparatory processing and de-noising. The purpose of ‎these enhancements is to visually highlight suspicious objects in the underwater images. To calculate the effectiveness of the proposed ‎method, testing has been conducted on a variety of underwater image datasets with various settings and suspicious objects. Analysis was ‎done in contrast to current methods for pre-processing, noise reduction, and object recognition. The results were evaluated using measurable ‎performance metrics as SSIM, MSE, and PSNR. The experiment's findings demonstrate that the combined approach outperforms the ‎individual methods, resulting in a higher rate of detection the 71.2% in Dn-CNN and 61.1 in CLAHE, by making suspicious items appear ‎larger and improving the overall clarity and quality of underwater images. Numerous applications in military operations, offshore ‎technology, maritime research and rescue, aquaculture, and other domains make it an essential sensor technology.

  • References

    1. Ulutas, Guzin, and Beste Ustubioglu. "Underwater image enhancement using contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization and layered difference representation." Multimedia Tools and Applications 80 (2021): 15067-15091. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-10426-2.
    2. Han, F., Yao, J., Zhu, H., & Wang, C. (2020), “Underwater image processing and object detection based on deep CNN method”, Journal of Sensors, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/6707328.
    3. Fu, X., & Cao, X. (2020). “Underwater image enhancement with global–local networks and compressed-histogram equalization”, Signal Processing: Image Communication, 86, 115892https://doi.org/10.1016/j.image.2020.115892.
    4. Lee, H. S., Moon, S. W., & Eom, I. K. (2020), “Underwater image enhancement using successive color correction and superpixel dark channel prior. Symmetry”, 12(8), 1220. https://doi.org/10.3390/sym12081220
    5. Alaguselvi, R., and Kalpana Murugan. "Quantitative analysis of fundus image enhancement in the detection of diabetic retinopathy using deep convolutional neural network." IETE Journal of Research (2021): 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/03772063.2021.1997356.
    6. S. Guo, Z. Yan, K. Zhang, W. Zuo, L. Zhang, Toward convolutional blind denoising of real photographs, in: 2019 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2018, pp. 1712–1722, https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2019.00181.
    7. C. Ledig, L. Theis, F. Huszár, J.A. Caballero, A. Aitken, A. Tejani, J. Totz, Z. Wang, W. Shi, Photo-realistic single image super-resolution using a generative adversarial network, in: 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2016, pp. 105–114, https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2017.19.
    8. Sudhakara, M., & Meena, M. J. (2021), “Multi-scale fusion for underwater image enhancement using multi-layer perceptron”, IAES International Journal of Artificial Intelligence, 10(2), 389. https://doi.org/10.11591/ijai.v10.i2.pp389-397.
    9. J. Chen, J. Hou, L.-P. Chau, Light field denoising via anisotropic parallax analysis in a cnn framework, IEEE Signal Process. Lett. 25 (9) (2018) 1403–1407, https://doi.org/10.1109/LSP.2018.2861212.
    10. J. Lehtinen, J. Munkberg, J. Hasselgren, S. Laine, T. Karras, M. Aittala, T. Aila, Noise2noise: Learning image restoration without clean data, 2018, arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.04189.
    11. Jian, Muwei, et al. "Underwater image processing and analysis: A review." Signal Processing: Image Communication 91 (2021): 116088. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.image.2020.116088.
    12. Singh, N., & Bhat, A. (2023). A systematic review of the methodologies for the processing and enhancement of underwater images. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 82, 38371–38396. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-023-15156-9.
    13. Hou, Guojia, et al. "An efficient nonlocal variational method with application to underwater image restoration." Neurocomputing 369 (2019): 106-121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2019.08.041.
    14. Muniraj, Manigandan, and Vaithiyanathan Dhandapani. "Underwater image enhancement by color correction and color constancy via Retinex for detail preserving." Computers and Electrical Engineering 100 (2022): 107909. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2022.107909.
    15. Ramkumar, G., M. Ayyadurai, and C. Senthilkumar. "An effectual underwater image enhancement using deep learning algorithm." 2021 5th International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS). IEEE, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICICCS51141.2021.9432116.
    16. Y. Zhong, L. Liu, D. Zhao, H. Li, A generative adversarial network for image denoising, Multimedia Tools Appl. (2019) 1–13.
    17. Jiang, Qin, et al. "A novel deep neural network for noise removal from underwater image." Signal Processing: Image Communication 87 (2020): 115921. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.image.2020.115921.
    18. Lu, Huimin, et al. "Low illumination underwater light field images reconstruction using deep convolutional neural networks." Future Generation Computer Systems 82 (2018): 142-148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2018.01.001.
    19. Ding, Xueyan, et al. "Underwater image dehaze using scene depth estimation with adaptive color correction." OCEANS 2017-Aberdeen. IEEE, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1109/OCEANSE.2017.8084665.
    20. Cong, X., Zhao, Y., Gui, J., Hou, J., & Tao, D. (2024). A comprehensive survey on underwater image enhancement based on deep learning. arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.19684. https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.19684.
    21. Jamadandi, Adarsh, and Uma Mudenagudi. "Exemplar-based underwater image enhancement augmented by wavelet corrected transforms." Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops. 2019.
    22. Q. Yang, P. Yan, Y. Zhang, H. Yu, Y. Shi, X. Mou, M.K. Kalra, Y. Zhang, L. Sun, G. Wang, Low-dose CT image denoising using a generative adversarial network with wasserstein distance and perceptual loss, IEEE Trans. Med. Imaging 37 (2018) 1348–1357, https://doi.org/10.1109/TMI.2018.2827462.
    23. A. Umamageswari, S. Deepa, K. Raja, “An enhanced approach for leaf disease identification and classification using deep learning techniques”, Measurement: Sensors, Volume 24, 2022, 100568, ISSN2665-9174 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measen.2022.100568.
    24. Umamageswari., Johnson, S.D., Sara, D., Kothandaraman, R. (2022). An enhanced identification andclassification algorithm for plant leaf diseases based on deep learning. Traitement du Signal, Vol. 39, No.3, pp. 1013-1018. https://doi.org/10.18280/ts.390328.
    25. K. Dabov, A. Foi, V. Katkovnik, K.O. Egiazarian, Image denoising by sparse 3-d transform-domain collaborative filtering, IEEE Trans. Image Process. 16 (2007) 2080–2095, https://doi.org/10.1109/TIP.2007.901238.
    26. K. Zhang, W. Zuo, Y. Chen, D. Meng, L. Zhang, Beyond a Gaussian denoiser: Residual learning of deep CNN for image denoising, IEEE Trans. Image Process. 26 (2017) 3142–3155, https://doi.org/10.1109/TIP.2017.2662206.
    27. P. Isola, J.-Y. Zhu, T. Zhou, A.A. Efros, Image-to-image translation with conditional adversarial networks, in: 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2016, pp. 5967–5976, https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2017.632.
    28. C. Fabbri, M.J. Islam, J. Sattar, Enhancing underwater imagery using generative adversarial networks, in: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2018, pp. 7159–7165, https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA.2018.8460552.
    29. C. Li, J. Guo, C. Guo, Emerging from water: Underwater image color correction based on weakly supervised color transfer, IEEE Signal Process. Lett. 25 (2018) 323–327, https://doi.org/10.1109/LSP.2018.2792050.
    30. Y. Guo, H. Li, P. Zhuang, Underwater image enhancement using a multiscale dense generative adversarial network, IEEE J. Ocean. Eng. (2019) https://doi.org/10.1109/JOE.2019.2911447.
    31. A.Umamageswari, N.Bharathiraja, Shiny Irene (2023), “Novel fuzzy c-means based chameleon swarm algorithm for segmentation and progressive neural architecture search for plant disease classification”, ICT Express – Elsevier, September 2023, Vol:9, Issue:2, pp. 160-167https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icte.2021.08.019.
    32. S. Padmapriya, A. Umamageswari, S. Deepa, and J. Faritha Banu. 2023. A novel deep learning based underwater image de-noising and detecting suspicious object. J. Intell. Fuzzy Syst. 45, 4 (2023), 7129–7144. https://doi.org/10.3233/JIFS-234002.
    33. Umamageswari, A., Deepa, S., Hussain, F.B.J., Shanmugam, P. (2024). Enhancing underwater object detection using advanced deep learning de-noising techniques. Traitement du Signal, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 2593-2602. https://doi.org/10.18280/ts.410532.
    34. Oleiwi, B.K., Kadhim, M.R., Real time embedded system for object detection using deep learning AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 2415, 15 December 2022. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0093469.
    35. Al-Tameemi, M.I., Hasan, A.A., Oleiwi, B.K.," Design and implementation monitoring robotic system based on you only look once model using deep learning technique", IAES International Journal of Artificial Intelligence, 2023, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 106-113. https://doi.org/10.11591/ijai.v12.i1.pp106-113.
    36. Xu, R., Zhu, D., & Chen, M. (2024). "A Novel Underwater Object Detection Enhanced Algorithm Based on YOLOv5-MH." IET Image Processing, vol. 18, no. 12, pp. 3415-3429. https://doi.org/10.1049/ipr2.13183.
    37. Zhou, X., Mizuno, K., & Zhang, Y. (2024). "A Self-Supervised Denoising Strategy for Underwater Acoustic Camera Imageries." arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.02914.
    38. Hashisho, Y., Albadawi, M., Krause, T., & von Lukas, U. (2019). "Underwater Color Restoration Using U-Net Denoising Autoencoder." arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.09000. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISPA.2019.8868679.
    39. Pachaiyappan, P., Chidambaram, G., Jahid, A., & Alsharif, M. H. (2024). "Enhancing Underwater Object Detection and Classification Using Advanced Imaging Techniques: A Novel Approach with Diffusion Models." Sustainability, vol. 16, no. 17, article 7488. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177488.
    40. Liu, K., Sun, Q., Sun, D., Yang, M., & Wang, N. (2023). "Underwater Target Detection Based on Improved YOLOv7." arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.06939. https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11030677.
  • Downloads

  • How to Cite

    Deepa, S. ., Umamageswari, A., A, S. ., Beevi , L. S. ., & Raja , K. . (2025). Improving The Performance of Object Detection in ‎Underwater with Advanced Deep Learning Based Noise ‎Reduction Techniques. International Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 14(5), 131-143. https://doi.org/10.14419/3npw0a46