Image mining applications for underwater environment management - a review and research agenda

The underwater environment is gaining importance due to its role in enhancing the economy of the world and improving relationships between different countries across the world. There are several applications for underwater imaging, which are affected by the underwater environment. The review and bibliometric analysis provide a systematic understanding of various applications and problems faced by different underwater imaging techniques. It provides potential directions for future research as it provides an insight into the efficiency and sustainability of the proposed solutions for underwater imaging problems. The review consists of identifying relevant published articles from SCOPUS. The literature review included papers from underwater image denoising, detection, recognition, restoration, generation, dehazing, deblurring, quality assessment, classification, compression, and image processing. Analysis of network, recognition of pivot research topics, correlation and pattern combinations of accepted and recent research were identified with the help of bibliometric software. It also helped in identifying key authors, journals, influential institutions, and impactful keywords. The systematic reviews and bibliometric analysis exhibits and recognize the current and potential underwater image processing research interest for the future. The review and bibliometric analysis are considered relevant as they exhibit an organized and systematic underwater image processing study which could help in future research. A research framework is proposed for systematically organizing the main underwater techniques and their relationships to maximize the benefits offered in different underwater imaging fields. The study will help researchers and engineers in developing practical strategic plans for underwater environment cleaning operations