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
2036674525 2069257422
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. 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.