Experimental evaluation of underwater range-gated viewing in natural waters

In this work we evaluate the imaging performance of a range-gated underwater system in natural waters. Trials have been performed in both turbid and clear water. The field trials show that images can be acquired at significantly longer distances with the gated camera, compared to a conventional video camera. The distance where a target can be detected is increased by a factor of 2. For images suitable for object identification, the range improvement factor is typically 1.5. We also show examples of image processing of the range-gated images, which increases the image quality significantly.