Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Underwater Acoustics RANGE-INDEPENDENT SEGMENTATION OF SIDESCAN SONAR IMAGES WITH UNSUPERVISED SOFM ALGORITHM (SELF-ORGANIZING FEATURE MAPS)

The sidescan sonar records the energy of an emitted acoustical wave backscattered by the seafloor, orthogonally to the track followed. The statistical properties of the backscattered energy change with the nature of the seafloor, which allows for a segmentation of the seabed into homogeneous regions. However, the statistical description of the backscattering is not constant over the full swath of th