Forward scattering noise may degrade the imaging resolution and diffuse the image in turbid water. The reconstruction of diffused images hidden by forward scattering noise is crucial for underwater imaging. To overcome the limitation of forward scattering for optical imaging in turbid water, a nonlinear image reconstruction technology is proposed in the experiment. We experimentally demonstrated the reconstruction of the diffused images under turbid water via signal seeded incoherent modulation instability (MI) in a nonlinear photorefractive crystal. The reconstructed image with high quality and the minimum resolution of 28.51 lp/mm are observed in the experiment. This is the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that a spatial MI effect is used to process underwater weak optical diffused images in the experiment. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America