Physics-Shaped, Not Physical: Auditing Physics-Guided Underwater Image Restoration
Physics-guided networks for underwater image restoration predict transmission and backscatter and invert the image-formation model, yet rarely test whether this physics does any work. We audit one representative design, PhysGuide-Net, with four controlled experiments: five-seed ablations on UIEB with zero-shot evaluation on the complete LSUI (4279 pairs) and AUIED3K (3000 pairs) sets; a data-efficiency study with a capacity-matched control that removes the formation model; and a validation of the predicted maps against measured range on Sea-thru. With all 800 training images the physics module gives no zero-shot gain (mean PSNR differences of at most 0.16 dB; all 95% intervals include zer...
| Authors | Mochamad Rizal Fauzan, Irgi Surya |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CV |
| Published | 14 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 14 October 2026 |
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