Abstract
Systems and methods are described for correcting distorted images captured of underwater environments. Caustics are used to provide additional illumination to underwater objects, and lenslets from ocean wave fluid lensing are used to magnify a benthic scene for enhancing the effective resolution of the images. The process introduces a fluid distortion characterization methodology, caustic bathymetry concepts, fluid lensing lenslet homography technique, two dimensional image reconstruction process, and three dimensional airborne fluid lensing process for characterizing the aquatic surface wave field, modelling bathymetry using caustic phenomena, and robust high-resolution aquatic remote sensing. Performing remote sensing using fluid lensing, also referred to as the fluid lensing process, utilizes high-frame-rate multispectral remote sensing data to remove ocean wave distortions from an image, to enhance the resolution of an image by exploiting ocean waves, and to enhance the signal strength of an image otherwise impaired by optical absorption in the water column.