DCD-UIE: Decoupled Chromatic Diffusion Model for Underwater Image Enhancement

Color distortion and structural degradation in underwater images are classic challenges in underwater image enhancement. The core goal is to restore degraded images to high-quality images with both color and structure that conform to visual perception. However, in the traditional RGB space, these two issues are highly coupled, resulting in existing enhancement methods often neglecting one over the other. To address this challenge, we propose a guided diffusion model based on the principle of decoupling. Our key insight is that in perceptual color spaces such as HSV, color (H, S) and structure (V) are naturally separated. To exploit this property, we first design an adaptive perceptual guidance module, which…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 61972235, 62301105, 62272281, 62002200, 61772319, U24A20219
• NS
  Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province

  Awards: ZR2025QC712, ZR2025QC695, ZR2025MS985
• TS
  Taishan Scholar Project of Shandong Province

  Awards: tsqn202306274, tsqn202507240