Underwater Image Processing using Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

Abstract

Image processing is a method used for enhancement of an image or to extract some useful information from the image. It is a type of signal processing in which input is an image and output may be an image or any characteristics/features associated with that image. In this paper we will be focusing on a specific type of Image Processing i.e. Underwater Image Processing. Underwater Image Processing has always faced the problem of imbalance in colour distribution and this problem can be tackled by the simplest algorithm for colour balancing. We will be proceeding with the assumption that the highest values of R, G, B observed in the image corresponds to white and the lowest values corresponds to darkness. The underwater images are majorly saturated by blue colour because of its short wavelength and in this paper, we aim to enhance the image. We proposed a colour balancing algorithm for normalizing the image. The entire process will first be carried out on a CPU followed by a GPU. We will then compare the speedup obtained. Speedup is an important parameter in the field on image processing since a better speedup can help reduce the computation time significantly while maintaining a higher efficiency.