On-board restoration of underwater images on embedded platforms such as marine drones is faced with many obstacles including image quality and real-time constraints. Confrontations met on the way vary from views to solution methods depending on the goals, such as underwater vehicle realtime control and positioning or underwater object recognition. In this research, five algorithms for underwater image restoration were studied and evaluated. In order to evaluate the quality of the performing algorithms nine evaluation criteria were used. Split into two types, the no reference metrics assesses only the quality of the image results, while the full reference criterion uses a reference image to estimate it. The calculation of these criteria allows each algorithm to be compared. Furthermore, the possibility to optimise algorithms in order to make them applicable to meet real-time requirements on embedded platforms was investigated.