Underwater Image Enhancement using Generative Adversarial Networks: A Survey

In recent years, there has been a surge of research focused on underwater image enhancement using generative adversarial networks (GANs), driven by the need to overcome the challenges posed by underwater environments. Issues such as light attenuation, scattering, and color distortion severely degrade the quality of underwater images, limiting their use in critical applications. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) have emerged as a powerful tool for enhancing underwater images due to their ability to learn complex transformations and generate realistic outputs. These advances have been applied to real-world applications, including marine biology and ecosystem monitoring, coral reef health assessment, underwater archaeology, and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) navigation . This paper explores all major approaches to underwater image enhancement, from physical and physics-free models to convolutional neural network (CNN)-based models and state-of-the-art GAN-based methods. It comprehensively analyzes these methods, datasets, evaluation metrics, loss functions and recent trends in underwater image enhancement offering a holistic view of the field. Furthermore, the paper delves into the limitations and challenges faced by current methods, such as generalization issues, high computational demands, and dataset biases, while suggesting potential directions for future research.