A new method of inshore ship detection in high-resolution optical remote sensing images

Qifeng Hu; Yaling Du; Yunqiu Jiang; Delie Ming

doi:10.1117/12.2199814

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8 October 2015 A new method of inshore ship detection in high-resolution optical remote sensing images

Qifeng Hu, Yaling Du, Yunqiu Jiang, Delie Ming

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Proceedings Volume 9675, AOPC 2015: Image Processing and Analysis; 967523 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2199814
Event: Applied Optics and Photonics China (AOPC2015), 2015, Beijing, China

Abstract

Ship as an important military target and water transportation, of which the detection has great significance. In the military field, the automatic detection of ships can be used to monitor ship dynamic in the harbor and maritime of enemy, and then analyze the enemy naval power. In civilian field, the automatic detection of ships can be used in monitoring transportation of harbor and illegal behaviors such as illegal fishing, smuggling and pirates, etc. In recent years, research of ship detection is mainly concentrated in three categories: forward-looking infrared images, downward-looking SAR image, and optical remote sensing images with sea background. Little research has been done into ship detection of optical remote sensing images with harbor background, as the gray-scale and texture features of ships are similar to the coast in high-resolution optical remote sensing images. In this paper, we put forward an effective harbor ship target detection method. First of all, in order to overcome the shortage of the traditional difference method in obtaining histogram valley as the segmentation threshold, we propose an iterative histogram valley segmentation method which separates the harbor and ships from the water quite well. Secondly, as landing ships in optical remote sensing images usually lead to discontinuous harbor edges, we use Hough Transform method to extract harbor edges. First, lines are detected by Hough Transform. Then, lines that have similar slope are connected into a new line, thus we access continuous harbor edges. Secondary segmentation on the result of the land-and-sea separation, we eventually get the ships. At last, we calculate the aspect ratio of the ROIs, thereby remove those targets which are not ship. The experiment results show that our method has good robustness and can tolerate a certain degree of noise and occlusion.

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Qifeng Hu, Yaling Du, Yunqiu Jiang, and Delie Ming "A new method of inshore ship detection in high-resolution optical remote sensing images", Proc. SPIE 9675, AOPC 2015: Image Processing and Analysis, 967523 (8 October 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2199814

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