Side-Scan Sonar Image Fusion Based on Sum-Modified Laplacian Energy Filtering and Improved Dual-Channel Impulse Neural Network

Abstract

The operation mode of a single strip provides incomplete side-scan sonar image in a specific environment and range, resulting in the overlapping area between adjacent strips often with imperfect detection information or inaccurate target contour. In this paper, a sum-modified Laplacian energy filtering (SMLF) and improved dual-channel pulse coupled neural network (IDPCNN) are proposed for image fusion of side-scan sonar in the domain of nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT). Among them, SMLF energy is applied to extract the fusion coefficients of the low frequency sub-band, which combines the characteristics of energy information, human visual contrast, and guided filtering to eliminate the pseudo contour effect of block flow. In addition, the IDPCNN model, which utilizes the average gradient, soft limit function, and novel sum-modified Laplacian (NSML) to adaptively represent the corresponding excitation parameters, is applied to improve the depth and activity of pulse ignition, so as to quickly and accurately select the image coefficients of the high frequency sub-band. The experimental results show that the proposed method displays fine geomorphic information and clear target contour in the overlapping area of adjacent strips. The objective index values are generally optimal, which reflect the information of image edge, clarity, and overall similarity.

Keywords

• sonar image fusion
• overlapping area between adjacent strips
• nonsubsampled contourlet transform
• sum-modified laplacian energy filtering
• dual-channel pulse coupled neural network