A computer model to simulate the formation of underwater images has been developed. The model incorporates the inherent and apparent properties of the propagation of light in water. In a treatment similar to that of McGlamery [10], an image is approximated as a linear superposition of several image components. The model has been used to simulate the relative advantages of different camera/light configurations. The results indicate that extremely large gains in image contrast can be obtained via careful design of beam patterns and the manipulation of camera and light locations. The performance of rangegated systems is explored, and it is demonstrated that these systems are presently power-limited. In order to obtain better quality images at larger distances, an imaging configuration is proposed which consists of scanning an incoherent light beam across the field of view of a camera. The incoherent light-scanning system is shown to have advantages over both conventional imaging techniques as well as range-gated methods. © 1990 IEEE
