mosaic-library: A Python video mosaicking library specialised for seabed mapping

Abstract

This paper presents mosaic-library, a Python software package designed for underwater mosaicking applications to manipulate and process seabed video data. The library aims to simplify and enhance the process of creating mosaics from underwater videos, allowing for improved exploration and analysis of seabed environments for marine science applications (such as bottom feature classification and biodiversity monitoring). The library offers various functionalities, including reading input videos, colour and contrast balancing, image resizing, image registration using feature detection and description, transformation estimation, homography transformations, visual-inertial alignment, and mosaic generation. Moreover, version 2 of the library contains an extensible set of classes to allow advanced users to develop their own mosaicking applications, with support for CUDA acceleration on NVIDIA hardware. The library is currently used for several applications to map the seabottom and in support of fish stock assessment procedures and biodiversity analyses. The software’s capabilities are demonstrated with examples showcasing the various features.

Keywords

• Video mosaic
• Seabed mapping
• Image manipulation