Layered depth inference from flow in underwater imagery

Motion blur is a common phenomenon in the presence of camera shake or object motion. In this paper, we deal with the challenging situation of underwater imaging. Specifically, we assume a static camera looking vertically down-wards at a scene but through a flowing water surface. The source of motion blur is due to the dynamic medium between the scene and the camera. Under reasonable assumptions, we establish that the motion blur induced by commonly observed fluid flows can serve as a valuable cue for inferring the underlying depth layers of the scene. We validate our approach with synthetic and real examples.