Optical imaging under water represents an unresolved problem until today. Poor visibility, blurred images and a minor signal-to-noise-ratio are the consequences of absorption, scattering and marine-snow dominating the properties of water. In order to inspect underwater infrastructure like dam walls or offshore wind farms image enhancement or image restoration is crucial. In this technical report a model for underwater light propagation is derived. The presented model has the ability to describe many effects on image degradation in underwater imaging, e.g. low contrast, brightening, decrease of signal-to-noise-ratio and color-shift.
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