相比传统水下摄像机, 水下距离选通成像的作用距离可提高两三倍, 同时基于该技术可实现快速高分辨率三维成像, 在水底详查、避障导航、海洋科学研究、矿藏开发等方面具有广泛应用前景。虽然距离选通成像可通过空间切片的方式抑制水体的后向散射噪声, 实现感兴趣区较高质量的成像, 但是, 在选通图像中仍不可避免地存在空间切片水体的后向散射噪声, 导致图像信噪比和对比度降低, 尤其是对于远距离目标或低反射率目标。介绍了针对水下距离选通二维成像及三维成像去噪方面的技术研究。在二维成像方面, 一是采用双平台自适应增强算法提高图像对比度, 更好地满足人眼视觉要求; 二是采用参考水体去噪算法实现含目标图像的水体去噪, 提高信噪比。在三维成像方面, 针对距离能量相关三维成像, 一是利用参考水体去噪算法实现去噪三维重建, 二是采用双边滤波法对三维图像中数据空洞进行修复, 提高三维图像质量。所述四种方法可独立或联合用于水下距离选通成像的去噪增强, 提高水下距离选通成像技术的性能。

Compared with traditional underwater cameras, the detection distance of underwater range- gated imaging can be increased by 2-3 times. Furthermore, based on this technology, fast high-resolution 3D imaging can be achieved. It has great potentials in underwater target detection and recognition, automatic navigation, marine scientific research and natural resources exploration. Although range-gated imaging can suppress the backscattering noise by space slicing, and achieve higher quality images, the backscattering noise of the sampling water volume still exists in gated images, resulting in low image signal-to-noise ratio and contrast, especially for distant targets or low reflectance targets. This paper systematically introduced author′s research of deblurring methods for 2D and 3D range-gated imaging. In 2D imaging, two methods were proposed: the first was an algorithm of self-adaptive double-plateau histogram equalization to improve image contrast and better meet human vision; the second was to use a water-noise-reference denoising algorithm to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of target gated images. In 3D imaging, there were also two methods proposed: one was to use the water-noise-reference denoising algorithm for 3D reconstruction, and the other was to use the threshold-dependent joint bilateral filter algorithm for enhancing 3D images. The four proposed methods can be used independently or in combination for denoising enhancement of underwater range gated imaging.