Matching sonar images with high accuracy has been a problem for a long time, as sonar images are inherently hard to model due to reflections, noise and viewpoint dependence. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles require good sonar image matching capabilities for tasks such as tracking, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and some cases of object detection recognition. We propose the use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to learn a matching function that can be trained from labeled sonar data, after pre-processing to generate matching and non-matching pairs. In a dataset of 39K training pairs, we obtain 0.91 Area under the ROC Curve (AUC) for a CNN that outputs a binary classification matching decision, and 0.89 AUC for another CNN that outputs a matching score. In comparison, classical keypoint matching methods like SIFT, SURF, ORB and AKAZE obtain AUC 0.61 to 0.68. Alternative learning methods obtain similar results, with a Random Forest Classifier obtaining AUC 0.79, and a Support Vector Machine resulting in AUC 0.66.
A large portion of the research about matching sonar images is devoted to registration and mosaicing @cite_3 @cite_8 . Both processes require many assumptions on the kind of images and their content, specially when considering non-uniform insonification and simple transformations between images.
@cite_3 @cite_8
2069257422 2036674525 2096084339 2034432063
This paper presents a method to build large-scale mosaics adapted to underwater sonar imagery. By assuming a simplified imaging model, we propose to address the registrations between images using Fourier-based methods which, unlike feature-based methods, prove well suited to handle the characteristics of forward-looking sonar images, such as low resolution, noise, occlusions and moving shadows. The registration between spatially and temporally distant images resulting from loop-closing situations or registrations in featureless areas are feasible, overcoming the main difficulties of feature-based methods. The problem is cast as a pose-based graph optimization, taking into account the uncertainties of the pairwise registrations and being able to incorporate navigation information. After the optimization, a consistent mosaic from different tracklines is generated with increased resolution and higher signal-to-noise ratio than the original images, while the vehicle motion in x,y and heading is also estimated. An algorithm for image registration and mosaicing on underwater sonar image sequences characterised by a high noise level, inhomogeneous illumination and low frame rate is presented. Imaging geometry of acoustic cameras is significantly different from that of pinhole cameras. For a planar surface viewed through a pinhole camera undergoing translational and rotational motion, registration can be obtained via a projective transformation. For an acoustic camera, it is shown that, under the same conditions, an affine transformation is a good approximation. A novel image fusion method, which maximises the signal-to-noise ratio of the mosaic image is proposed. The full procedure includes illumination correction, feature based transformation estimation, and image fusion for mosaicing. A method for classifying objects in sonar imagery is proposed. Motivated by the high-resolution achievable by modern imaging sonars, a novel template matching technique is developed that compares a target signature generated from a simple acoustic model with the actual image of an object being classified. The approach uses both the correlation with target echoes as well as projected acoustic shadow, and is tested on data obtained from a synthetic aperture sonar during experiments at sea. It is compared to two commonly used methods that are based on normalized cross-correlation, and results show that the proposed method outperforms the standard methods in terms of receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves as well as confusion matrices. A new approach to the problem of multimodality medical image registration is proposed, using a basic concept from information theory, mutual information (MI), or relative entropy, as a new matching criterion. The method presented in this paper applies MI to measure the statistical dependence or information redundancy between the image intensities of corresponding voxels in both images, which is assumed to be maximal if the images are geometrically aligned. Maximization of MI is a very general and powerful criterion, because no assumptions are made regarding the nature of this dependence and no limiting constraints are imposed on the image content of the modalities involved. The accuracy of the MI criterion is validated for rigid body registration of computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR), and photon emission tomography (PET) images by comparison with the stereotactic registration solution, while robustness is evaluated with respect to implementation issues, such as interpolation and optimization, and image content, including partial overlap and image degradation. Our results demonstrate that subvoxel accuracy with respect to the stereotactic reference solution can be achieved completely automatically and without any prior segmentation, feature extraction, or other preprocessing steps which makes this method very well suited for clinical applications.