Evaluating Realistic Volume Scattering Functions on Underwater Imaging System Performance

摘要

The Navy has a continuing and pressing need to improve its ability to visually detect and identify underwater objects. As far as imaging environments go, this is one of the worst: absorption and scattering by the water and the dissolved and particulate within rob a system of its signal and blur the resulting image. Sophisticated systems like the Laser Line Scanner (LLS) and the Streak-Tube Imaging LIDAR (STIL) have been designed and engineered to address some of these difficulties. But while engineering properties of an imaging system can be decided upon and controlled to a certain extent, it is most often the variable environmental conditions that are the limiting factors to system performance and, ultimately, utility. Our goal is to evaluate the effects of these environmental conditions on the performance of underwater imaging systems.