Target recognition in synthetic aperture and high resolution side-scan sonar

The accurate detection and identification of underwater targets continues as a major issue, despite, or perhaps as a result of, the promise of higher resolution underwater imaging systems, including synthetic aperture sonar, high frequency sidescan and high resolution cameras. Numerous techniques have been proposed for Computer Aided Detection to detect all possible mine-like objects, and Computer Aided Classification to classify whether the detected object is a target or not. The majority of existing techniques have concentrated on the analysis of the acoustic shadow casted by the objects. With the development of ultra high-resolution systems, new techniques inherited from the computer vision community can now be applied, taking into account the acoustic echo and shadow. This paper will briefly revie