Title: Target detection algorithm in side-scan sonar image based on pixel importance value measurement

Author(s): BIAN Hongyu; CHEN Yiming; ZHANG Zhigang; WEI Mingzhe;

Affiliation(s): Acoustic Science and Technology Laboratory, Harbin Engineering University; Peng Cheng Laboratory; Key Laboratory of Marine Information Acquisition and Security (Harbin Engineering University), Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; College of Underwater Acoustic Engineering, Harbin Engineering University; Intelligence and Information Engineering College, Tangshan University

Abstract: Side-scan sonar detection application always combines with unstable results. A two-stage novel pixel importance value measurement algorithm is proposed to stabilize the detection ability and false alarm probability simultaneously. In first stage of the algorithm, a new feature defined as pixel importance value (PIV) is proposed in terms of distances between the target pixel and each other pixels. PIV measurement of current pixel is defined as the weighted sum of all remaining segmented pixels. The weighted part refers to Gaussian kernel, which means closer pixels gets higher weight. Thus, targets with higher PIV can be located. In the second stage, we use convolutional neural network as classifier to eliminate the dot-like false targets. Our experiment data is obtained by autonomous underwater vehicle, where we demonstrate superior performance of our algorithm over the state-of-the-art sonar detection algorithms in terms of 90. 39% recall rate and 2. 39% false alarm probability.