mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

U-shape Transformer for Underwater Image Enhancement

arXiv 2111.11843 ↗First posted 23 Nov 2021cs.CV eess.IVcited by 112

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Abstract (arXiv)

The light absorption and scattering of underwater impurities lead to poor underwater imaging quality. The existing data-driven based underwater image enhancement (UIE) techniques suffer from the lack of a large-scale dataset containing various underwater scenes and high-fidelity reference images. Besides, the inconsistent attenuation in different color channels and space areas is not fully considered for boosted enhancement. In this work, we constructed a large-scale underwater image (LSUI) dataset including 5004 image pairs, and reported an U-shape Transformer network where the transformer model is for the first time introduced to the UIE task. The U-shape Transformer is integrated with a channel-wise multi-scale feature fusion transformer (CMSFFT) module and a spatial-wise global feature modeling transformer (SGFMT) module, which reinforce the network's attention to the color channels and space areas with more serious attenuation. Meanwhile, in order to further improve the contrast and saturation, a novel loss function combining RGB, LAB and LCH color spaces is designed following the human vision principle. The extensive experiments on available datasets validate the state-of-the-art performance of the reported technique with more than 2dB superiority.

Key facts. Cited by 112 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 25 of its 71 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Nov 2021.

Builds on

25 of 71 references.

References · 25

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13 more
  1. 2019UNet++: Redesigning Skip Connections to Exploit Multiscale Features in Image Segmentationcited by 586
  2. 2018Learning to See in the Darkcited by 460
  3. 2019An Underwater Image Enhancement Benchmark Dataset and Beyondcited by 253
  4. 2021UCTransNet: Rethinking the Skip Connections in U-Net from a Channel-wise Perspective with Transformercited by 197
  5. 2019Fast Underwater Image Enhancement for Improved Visual Perceptioncited by 183
  6. 2021Underwater Image Enhancement via Medium Transmission-Guided Multi-Color Space Embeddingcited by 134
  7. 2017WaterGAN: Unsupervised Generative Network to Enable Real-time Color Correction of Monocular Underwater Imagescited by 112
  8. 2018Enhancing Underwater Imagery using Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 95
  9. 2018Underwater Single Image Color Restoration Using Haze-Lines and a New Quantitative Datasetcited by 93
  10. 2019Real-world Underwater Enhancement: Challenges, Benchmarks, and Solutionscited by 90
  11. 2017Emerging from Water: Underwater Image Color Correction Based on Weakly Supervised Color Transfercited by 41
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  13. 2019All-In-One Underwater Image Enhancement using Domain-Adversarial Learningcited by 29

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 2; 2023: 16; 2024: 30; 2025: 37; 2026: 27.

112 papers.

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  1. 2023Reti-Diff: Illumination Degradation Image Restoration with Retinex-based Latent Diffusion Modelcited by 69
  2. 2023Underwater Image Enhancement by Transformer-based Diffusion Model with Non-uniform Sampling for Skip Strategycited by 33
  3. 2023Toward Sufficient Spatial-Frequency Interaction for Gradient-aware Underwater Image Enhancementcited by 27
  4. 2024Learning A Physical-aware Diffusion Model Based on Transformer for Underwater Image Enhancementcited by 25
  5. 2025UniUIR: Considering Underwater Image Restoration as An All-in-One Learnercited by 22
  6. 2025UnfoldIR: Rethinking Deep Unfolding Network in Illumination Degradation Image Restorationcited by 22
  7. 2024UVEB: A Large-scale Benchmark and Baseline Towards Real-World Underwater Video Enhancementcited by 18
  8. 2025Underwater Image Restoration Through a Prior Guided Hybrid Sense Approach and Extensive Benchmark Analysiscited by 17
  9. 2023A Generalized Physical-knowledge-guided Dynamic Model for Underwater Image Enhancementcited by 16
  10. 2024Phaseformer: Phase-based Attention Mechanism for Underwater Image Restoration and Beyondcited by 15
  11. 2024Underwater Image Restoration via Polymorphic Large Kernel CNNscited by 14
  12. 2024Osmosis: RGBD Diffusion Prior for Underwater Image Restorationcited by 13
38 more
  1. 2024All-in-one Weather-degraded Image Restoration via Adaptive Degradation-aware Self-prompting Modelcited by 13
  2. 2023Deep Image Harmonization in Dual Color Spacescited by 12
  3. 2023Improving Underwater Visual Tracking With a Large Scale Dataset and Image Enhancementcited by 11
  4. 2024A Comprehensive Survey on Underwater Image Enhancement Based on Deep Learningcited by 9
  5. 2024A Physical Model-Guided Framework for Underwater Image Enhancement and Depth Estimationcited by 9
  6. 2024FDCE-Net: Underwater Image Enhancement with Embedding Frequency and Dual Color Encodercited by 8
  7. 2024Aquatic-GS: A Hybrid 3D Representation for Underwater Scenescited by 8
  8. 2023MuLA-GAN: Multi-Level Attention GAN for Enhanced Underwater Visibilitycited by 7
  9. 2024WaterMamba: Visual State Space Model for Underwater Image Enhancementcited by 7
  10. 2025AquaticCLIP: A Vision-Language Foundation Model for Underwater Scene Analysiscited by 7
  11. 2026From Zero to Detail: A Progressive Spectral Decoupling Paradigm for UHD Image Restoration with New Benchmarkcited by 7
  12. 2023UIEDP:Underwater Image Enhancement with Diffusion Priorcited by 6
  13. 2024PHISWID: Physics-Inspired Underwater Image Dataset Synthesized from RGB-D Imagescited by 6
  14. 2023A Gated Cross-domain Collaborative Network for Underwater Object Detectioncited by 5
  15. 2023UnitModule: A Lightweight Joint Image Enhancement Module for Underwater Object Detectioncited by 5
  16. 2024End-To-End Underwater Video Enhancement: Dataset and Modelcited by 5
  17. 2024MambaUIE&SR: Unraveling the Ocean's Secrets with Only 2.8 GFLOPscited by 5
  18. 2025Advancing Marine Research: UWSAM Framework and UIIS10K Dataset for Precise Underwater Instance Segmentationcited by 5
  19. 2026Downstream Task Inspired Underwater Image Enhancement: A Perception-Aware Study from Dataset Construction to Network Designcited by 5
  20. 2025Improving underwater semantic segmentation with underwater image quality attention and muti-scale aggregation attentioncited by 4
  21. 2025UWBench: A Comprehensive Vision-Language Benchmark for Underwater Understandingcited by 4
  22. 2023RAUNE-Net: A Residual and Attention-Driven Underwater Image Enhancement Methodcited by 3
  23. 2024AoSRNet: All-in-One Scene Recovery Networks via Multi-knowledge Integrationcited by 3
  24. 2024Mamba-UIE: Enhancing Underwater Images with Physical Model Constraintcited by 3
  25. 2024Contribution-based Low-Rank Adaptation with Pre-training Model for Real Image Restorationcited by 3
  26. 2024ReviveDiff: A Universal Diffusion Model for Restoring Images in Adverse Weather Conditionscited by 3
  27. 2025DPF-Net: Physical Imaging Model Embedded Data-Driven Underwater Image Enhancementcited by 3
  28. 2025Underwater Image Enhancement by Convolutional Spiking Neural Networkscited by 3
  29. 2025UVLM: Benchmarking Video Language Model for Underwater World Understandingcited by 3
  30. 2025Global Modeling Matters: A Fast, Lightweight and Effective Baseline for Efficient Image Restorationcited by 3
  31. 2025FlowLUT: Efficient Image Enhancement via Differentiable LUTs and Iterative Flow Matchingcited by 3
  32. 2025WWE-UIE: A Wavelet & White Balance Efficient Network for Underwater Image Enhancementcited by 3
  33. 2023A deep learning approach for marine snow synthesis and removalcited by 2
  34. 2024Underwater Variable Zoom: Depth-Guided Perception Network for Underwater Image Enhancementcited by 2
  35. 2024A 7K Parameter Model for Underwater Image Enhancement based on Transmission Map Priorcited by 2
  36. 2024UIE-UnFold: Deep Unfolding Network with Color Priors and Vision Transformer for Underwater Image Enhancementcited by 2
  37. 2024SINET: Sparsity-driven Interpretable Neural Network for Underwater Image Enhancementcited by 2
  38. 2024Unveiling Advanced Frequency Disentanglement Paradigm for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 2

50 most cited of 112 All 112 (JSON)