Sea Ice Image Processing with MATLAB®

The ice concentration data on a global scale are available on a daily basis due to microwave satellite sensors. Image processing for sea ice is vital to estimate the sea ice properties and understand the behavior of sea ice especially on a relatively small scale. Currently, sea ice concentration is estimated from lower-resolution passive microwave sensors. This book aims to present the most recent image processing techniques including the so-called gradient vector flow snake algorithm to identify individual ice floes from the ice images. It makes an extensive use of this powerful technique to extract or estimate the sea-ice parameters and to develop tools useful to scientists and engineers.

Sea Ice Image Processing with MATLAB addresses the topic of image processing for the extraction of key sea ice characteristics from digital photography, which is of great relevance for Artic remote sensing and marine operations. This valuable guide provides tools for quantifying the ice environment that needs to be identified and reproduced for such testing. This includes fit-for-purpose studies of existing vessels, new-build conceptual design and detailed engineering design studies for new developments, and studies of demanding marine operations involving multiple vessels and operational scenarios in sea ice. A major contribution of this work is the development of automated computer algorithms for efficient image analysis. These are used to process individual sea-ice images and video streams of images to extract parameters such as ice floe size distribution, and ice types. Readers are supplied with Matlab source codes of the algorithms for the image processing methods discussed in the book made available as online material.

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