A ROBUST METHOD FOR SHIP AND WAKE

DETECTION

GUIDED BY:
Presented By Dr.S.MaryJoans
S.Bharath kumar(113214106024) M.E, (Ph.D)
N.Sankar(113214106122) H.O.D ECE
M.Praveenkumar(113214106097)
S.Saravana(113214106122)
 ABSTRACT
The project is mainly aimed at developing software tools for

extracting ocean features from satellite imagery. The developed

modules are tested using both SAR and Optical imagery.

SAR systems can generate images similar to optical images,

sometimes with much finer resolution. PALSAR-2, Sentinel–1, 2, ERS-

1, SPOT 7 are some of the commonly used satellites for acquiring

ocean information.

These satellites play important role in naval operation, marine

environmental protection, weather analysis and other geophysical

processes..
 OBJECTIVES
• In Maritime Surveillance SAR Oceanic images play an important role in naval

operations , marine environmental protection and geophysical process. But SAR images suffer

from speckle noise due to its coherent image acquisition mechanism, which makes us very difficult

to find the target region in the ocean for extracting its features.

• Developed a software module for extracting ocean features from SAR image with

three modules. One, preprocessing module which is designed for reduction of speckle noise using

various enhancement and filtering process. Two, Vessel detection module which helps to find total

number of vessels and distance between vessel using , morphological operations. Finally, Wake

detection module leads to detect the wake line using line detection algorithm such Hough and

Radon transforms.
 Literature Survey
S.NO Paper Title Year Proposed work Advantages Drawback

1 PERFORMANCE A novel technique for The detection It causes additionally

ANALYSIS OF ship and wake detection performance was overhead.
SHIP WAKE has been applied on x- analyzed in order to
DETECTION ON 2017 band SAR images distuinguish between
SENTINEL 1 provided by COSMO true
SAR IMAGES and TERRASAR-X.The conformations,where
detection process has the false
success rate of 78.4% conformation occur
where false rate occur in in 18.5% of
kelvin cups. components.
2 DETECTION The proposed algorithm Increased operational It doesn’t eliminate
OF SHIP WITH aimed at detecting efficiency through 16 system threat like
THE SPECTRAL 2014 coherent scatters for smart services and spoofing, denial of
ANALYSIS OF interferometry and interconnected service etc.
SYNTHETIC tracking methodologies devices.
APERTURE for ship detection
RADAR
 EXISTING SYSTEM
The Algorithm was already applied on X-band
from terras-X and COSMO mission with different
polarisation and different incident angles.
As far as ship detection is concerned,results
indicted that TSXscan SAR mode is a good
comprimise between a reasonable coverage,spatial
resolution and detection capability.
 Hardware and Software Used

Hardware :
• RASPBERRY PI 3

Software :
•OPERATING SYSTEM :MATLAB
•LANGUAGE :python
•PLATFORM :OpenCV & (Matlab-library)
 SAR IMAGE - CHARACTERISTICS

PALSAR-2 (Japanese Satellite)SAR Image (ScanSar)

Raspberry Pi
• A major advantage of the RPi is its low cost compared to a classical
PC computer –
• Ten times less than the DSP card cited in section I-,
• Good tradeoff between size and performance
• The B model is provided with 512 MB of Random Access Memory
(RAM), and a clock speed of 700MHz.
• The model 2 is provided with 1GB of RAM, and contains a Quad
Core processor, each with a clock speed of 900MHz.
 MODULE IMPLEMENTED

Three Modules,
Implemented
1.Preprocessing Enhancement Techniques
2.Vessel Detection Gray Level Intensity
3.Wake Detection Histogram Equalisation
Contrast Limited Adaptive
Filtering Techniques
Mean
Median
Hybrid Median
 MODULE IMPLEMENTED

Three Modules,
Implemented
1.Preprocessing Detection of vessel
2.Vessel Detection Calculating Distance Between
3.Wake Detection of vessel
 MODULE IMPLEMENTED

Three Modules,
Implemented
1.Preprocessing Wake Detection
2.Vessel Detection Radon Transform
3.Wake Detection Hough Transform
Calculating Velocity of Moving
Vessel
MODULE IMPLEMENTED
 IMAGE TILING

— Tiling is one of the methods used to reduce the processing time of

computing. According to the image size and resolution, has to fix the tile regions
such as
4 - region (2 x 2), 9 - region (3 x 3), 16 - region (4 x 4).

— Original SAR image is broken into regions with the help of row and column
separation method. To reduce the processing time, apply the regions of tiling to
the original image and then perform further analysis which includes enhancement
and speckle filtering

— After Despeckling the tile regions have, combine the all tile region to its

original size for further processing such as Vessel Detection.

 IMAGE TILING - 4 Tiling

Elapsed time is 257.361775 seconds.

SAR Image Speckle Noise SARSARImageImageSpDecklspeckleddNoiseNoise(4-Tile)(4-Tile)

 IMAGE TILING - 9 Tiling

Elapsed time is 260.099170 seconds.

SAR Image Speckle Noise SARSARImageImageDespeckledSpeckledNoiseoise (9(9--Tile)Tile)

 IMAGE ENHNACEMENT - Gray Level Intensity

* Enhancing an image provides better contrast and a more detailed image as compare to
non enhanced image.
* In Gray level Intensity approach image pixels values to fill the entire intensity range
[0,255] and increase the contrast of the image

The transformation function has been given below

s = T(r)

r - Pixels of the input image ; s - Pixels of the output image.

T - Transformation function
 IMAGE ENHNACEMENT - Histogram Equalization

*Histogram equalization is useful in images with backgrounds and foregrounds that are both bright or both
dark.
*In particular, the method can lead to better detail in Images that are over or under-exposed.

*A key advantage of the method is that it is a fairly straightforward technique and an invertible operator. The
calculation is not computationally intensive.

HE = ramd (pgpSS x (L “ X))

cdf(v) - cumulative distribution value

cdfmin - minimum non-zero value of the cumulative distribution L -

number of grey levels M * N - image's number of pixels

 IMAGE ENHNACEMENT - Histogram Equalization

Input Matrix

3 2 4 5 * In this Matrix, Intensity of the pixels vary between 1 - 8 .

7 7 8 2 * Suppose need to perform histogram equalization on this Matrix and scale

the intensity to 1-20
3 1 2 3
5 4 6 7 Pixel Intensity 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
No .of Pixels 1 3 3 2 2 1 3 1 0 0

Total Number of pixels - 16

Histogram Equalization
Probability = No.of Pixels/ Total Number of pixels (16)
8 5 11 13 0.062 0.187 0.187 0.125 0.125 0.062 0.187 0.062
Probability
0 0
18 18 20 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
Cum.Probability 0.062 0.25 0.437 0.562 0.687 0.75 0.937
8 1 5 8 5 5 5 5 5
1 1 1

13 11 15 18 C.P * 20 1.25 5 8.75 11.25 13.75 15 18.75 20 20 20

Round(HE) 1 5 8 11 13 15 18 20 20 20
 IMAGE ENHNACEMENT - Contrast Limited Adaptive HE

* Adaptive Histogram Equalization(AHE) differs from ordinary histogram

equalization in respect to the adaptive method computes several histograms, each
corresponding to a distinct section of the image and uses them to redistribute the
25 65 78 21 68 98
lightness value of image.
85 36 25 45 88 52
* AHE process good when the distribution of pixel values is similar throughout the
32 42 56 96 22 44
image. However, when the image contains regions that are significantly lighter or darker 88 78 22 36 98 25
than most of the image, the contrast in those regions will not be sufficiently enhanced. 41 58 23 86 47 58

* The size of the neighborhood region is a parameter of the method. It constitutes 12 85 69 52 69 25

a characteristic length scale: contrast at smaller scales is enhanced, while contrast at

larger scales is reduced.
 IMAGE ENHNACEMENT - Contrast Limited Adaptive HE

*AHE leads noise to be amplified in near-constant regions. Contrast Limited AHE (CLAHE) is a different of
adaptive histogram equalization in which the contrast amplification is limited, so as to reduce this problem of noise
amplification.
*CLAHE limits the amplification by clipping the histogram at a predefined value before calculating the CDF.It
is beneficial not to avoid the part of the histogram that exceeds the clip limit but to Redistribute it equally among all
histogram bins.
The redistribution will
push some bins over
the clip limit again . *

* The redistribution procedure can be repeated recursively until the excess is negligible.
 IMAGE ENHNACEMENT - Tested Module(Stripmap - HH Polarization)

Original SAR Image Gray Level Intensity Histogram Equalization

 IMAGE FILTERING - Mean Filter

* The Idea behind Mean filtering is to replace each pixel value in an image with the
mean(‘average’) value of its neighbors, including itself.
* This has the effect of eliminating pixel values which are unrepresentative of their
surroundings.
* Mean Filtering is usually thought of as a Convolution filter.
* Various kinds of Mean Filters: 1. Arithmetic Mean filter
2. Geometric Mean Filter
3. Harmonic Mean Filter
 IMAGE FILTERING - Arithmetic Mean Filter

* An arithmetic mean filter operates on an image and removes the short tailed noise

such as uniform and Gaussian type noise from the image at the cost of blurring the

image.

Arithmetic Mean =1/N ∑ d(r,c)

40 31 39
N=number of pixels
50 31 36
45 31 65 f(x,y)=(40+31+39+50+31+36+45+31+65)/9

f(x,y)=40

Speckle Noise in Satellite Image

 IMAGE FILTERING - Median Filter

*Median is a non-linear filter that replaces each pixel by the median of all
pixels in the neighborhood of its window. (i.e. 3*3, 5*5, 7*7, 9*9).
* All pixels within the neighborhood are sorted by their gray value and the
center pixel’s value is replaced by the median of its surroundings.
f{x,y) = Median{ g(s, t), where(s, t)£ S }

Neighborhoods are { 81,255, 75, 80, 82, 77, 82, 80, 79}
81 255 75
80 82 77 Sorted values are {255, 82, 82, 81,80, 80, 79, 77,75}

82 80 79 Middle value {80}

 IMAGE FILTERING - Hybrid Median Filter

*Hybrid Median preserves edges better than a square kernel median filter
because it is a three step ranking process where data from different spatial directions
are ranked separately.
Three median values are calculated : one is MR median of horizontal and vertical
pixels and MD is the median of diagonal D pixels.
The filtered value is the median of the two median values and the central pixel C

126 120 122 140 142

120 132 127 140 142
121 129 120 141 144 Hybrid Median = Median(MR,MD,C)

122 122 135 144 146 Hybrid Median = Median{ 120,127,132}

125 125 125 144 145
Hybrid Median Value = 127
Center Pixel = { 120 }
Median value of Horizontal & Vertical pixels (MR)={120,121,122,125,127,129,135,141,144}
Median value of Diagonal pixels (MD) = { 120,122,125,126,132,140 ,142,144,145 }
 IMAGE FILTERING - Lee Filter

* The Lee Filter uses a Least-square approach to estimate the true signal
strength of the center pixel in the filter window.
* The Filter calculation produces an output value close to the local mean for
uniform areas and a value close to the original input value in high contrast regions.
*Most Smoothing occurs in more uniform areas, but edges and other fine
details are maintained.
 IMAGE FILTERING - Tested Module

Original SAR Image Enhanced Image(Speckled) Filtered Image(Despeckled)

 VESSEL DETECTION - Morphological Operation

~ After Pre-processing on Satellite Image(SAR and Optical), using Threshold and Morphological Operations
have to detect the vessel in the satellite Images.
~ Morphological operations useful for representation and description of region shape in vessels and helps to
remove imperfections in the structure of vessels.

~ Erosion and Dilation are two basic Morphological operators helps to draw a perfect bounding box over

detected vessels.

Erosion : The basic effect of the operator on a binary image is to erode away the boundaries of regions of
foreground pixels (i.e., White pixels, typically). Thus areas of foreground pixels shrink in size, and holes within
those areas become larger.
Dilation : The basic effect of the operator on a binary image is to gradually enlarge the boundaries of
regions of foreground pixels (i.e. white pixels, typically). Thus areas of foreground pixels grow in size while holes
within those regions become smaller.
 VESSEL DETECTION - Morphological Operation

~ Opening and Closing are two important operators from Mathematical Morphology. They are both derived from the

fundamental operations of erosion and dilation.

Opening: (Erosion Followed by Dilation)

Opening tends to remove some of the foreground (bright) pixels from the edges of regions of foreground pixels. The

effect of the operator is to preserve foreground regions

Closing: (Dilation Followed by Erosion)

Closing tends to enlarge the boundaries of foreground (bright) regions in an image and shrink background color

holes in such regions. The effect of the operator is to preserve background regions.
 VESSEL DETECTION - Connected Component

~ Vessel Detection is generally performed by connected-component labeling on the resulting binary image

from a thresholding and morphological operation.

~ Connected-component labeling is used in computer vision to detect connected regions in binary digital

image.

~ Connected-component labeling is an algorithmic application of graph theory, which are mathematical

structures used to model pairwise relations between objects.

— From Connected-component labeling, measures a set of properties for each Connected region(i.e., Vessels)

* The actual number of pixels in the region — AREA.

* The center of mass of the region --- CENTROID.
* Using the Corner and width of the vessel able to BOUND BOX along each dimension.
VESSEL DETECTION - SAR image
VESSEL DETECTION - SAR image
 VESSEL DETECTION - Closest Distance (SAR Image)

Image Source : PALSAR - SPOTLIGHT MODE

The minimum distance from ship 7 to ship 23 is

3.372 Nautical Mile
 VESSEL DETECTION - Closest Distance (SAR Image)

Distance between the Vessel ( Nautical Mile)

Plotted Distance between VESSEL 12 to all VESSELS
Vessel 1 1.761

Vessel 2 1.849

Vessel 3 1.584

Vessel 4 1.642

Vessel 5 1.831

Vessel 6 1.226

Vessel 7 1.651
Vessel 12
Vessel 8 1.159

Vessel 9 1.150

Vessel 10 0.950

Vessel 11 1.003

Vessel 13 1.003

Vessel 14 1.321

Vessel 15 1.238
 WAKE DETECTION - Wake Characteristics

— A ship wake in satellite images appears as a fan of bright line - shaped features around a central dark line

representing the Turbulent Wake

— Kelvin wakes can be visible as set of Bright arms they are located at the boarder of the Turbulent
WAKE LINE DETECTION - Methodology
 WAKE LINE DETECTION

Normal Representation of a Straight Line

A Straight line in Cartesian Coordinates may be

described by its slope

X
 WAKE DETECTION - Hough Transform

The point where the curves intersect gives a distance and angle. This distance and angle indicate the line
which intersects the points being tested. In the graph shown the lines intersect at the Red mark point; this
corresponds to the solid pink line in the diagram, which passes through all three data points.

THREE DATA POINTS

Distance
 WAKE DETECTION - Hough Transform

Image to Detect Wake Hough Transform Detected Wake

Image to Detect Wake Hough Transform Detected Wake

-1500

-1000

-500

0
500

1000
1500
-50 0 50
0
WAKE DETECTION - Radon Transform
WAKE DETECTION - Radon Transform
WAKE DETECTION - Radon Transform

Projection at an angle 180 degree

 WAKE DETECTION - Radon Transform

Radon Peaks

~ The locations of peaks in the

transform correspond to the locations of
250
straight lines in the original image.
' (pixels from center)

200
~ The two Strongest Peak in Radon

150
Transform Corresponds to,

0 =92 degree and x'= -30pixels from center

10
0 =81 degree and x'= 20 pixels from center
0

0 20 40 60 BO 100 120 140 160 180

0 (degrees) 50
 WAKE DETECTION

~ The two Strongest Peak in Radon Transform

0 =92 degree and x'= -30pixels from center 0

For first Strongest peak,
=81 degree and x’= 20 pixels from center
~ The Red dashed line in the image is the radial
line passing through the center at an angle of 92
degrees.
~ Travel along the radial line a distance of-30

pixels from center, then the Red dashed radial

line perpendicularly intersects the solid yellow

lines.

~ These solid green lines correspond to the

strong peaks in R.
WAKE DETECTION - Tested Module(Radon Transform)

Detected lines

0 50 100 150

0
Radon Transform & Peaks
Original Image Detected lines
 WAKE DETECTION - Velocity Calculation

~ After wake line formation, we have calculate the angle between two lines in image

which is valuable for estimating the ship velocity, where, X is wavelength which is distance of two

maximum peaks and multiple with resolution of the image, 6 is an angle between wake lines, v is the

velocity of the ship.

7TL
~ Gravitational acceleration at sea level (constant value is 9.806 —).
•S
 CONCLUSION

This project focused on the information exploitation from the satellite imagery(Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) and

Optical imagery) of ocean regions. Since the speckle in SAR images degrade the quality of images, that made us to

implement suitable filters to reduce the noise and also preventing important information such as wakes edges. Using

morphological operations detected the vessels from the preprocessed images and also bounded the vessel area using

relevant bounding box. Wake detection method was implemented using two line detection algorithms namely Radon

transform and Hough Transform for both SAR and Optical Imagery. Finally from our analysis, noticed that radon

transform gives precise results than hough transform and also calculated wake angle and wavelength from the detected

wake lines to estimate the velocity of the vessel. All the methods are tested and verified using reference images available

in the literature. The GUI design and entire algorithm was implemented using our original code written using MATLAB.
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Thank You