Many high-resolution (m's to 10's of m's) remote sensing images of aquatic systems exhibit some degree of water-surface-reflected sunlight and skylight, typically along the slopes or crests of waves generated by local and/or remote surface winds. This reflected light is collectively referred to here as "glint." Despite careful selection of image acquisition time and solar/viewing geometry, glint patterns often prevent effective interpretation of sub-surface features.
Analytical methods have been developed to compensate for glint contributions in low-spatial-resolution (km's) ocean color imagery. However, these techniques only provide a bulk glint contribution at the km-scale and are unable to account for glint distributions at the m-scale, which is the scale relevant for bottom mapping in near-shore environments. We have developed a simple method based on physical principles for removal of glint effects from high-resolution imagery in shallow aquatic environments. We have fully described our method in a peer-reviewed article:
Hochberg EJ, Andrefouet S, Tyler MR (2003) Sea surface correction of high spatial resolution Ikonos images to improve bottom mapping in near-shore environments. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. 41(7): 1724-1729.
We have also developed a stand-alone program to perform deglinting. If you would like a copy of the paper, or the stand-alone program we developed please contact Eric Hochberg.