Revealing the Potential of Deep Learning for Detecting Submarine Pipelines in Side-Scan Sonar Images: An Investigation of Pre-Training Datasets

This study introduces a novel approach to the critical task of submarine pipeline or cable (POC) detection by employing GoogleNet for the automatic recognition of side-scan sonar (SSS) images. The traditional interpretation methods, heavily reliant on human interpretation, are replaced with a more reliable deep-learning-based methodology. We explored the enhancement of model accuracy via transfer learning and scrutinized the influence of three distinct pre-training datasets on the model’s performance. The results indicate that GoogleNet facilitated effective identification, with accuracy and precision rates exceeding 90%. Furthermore, pre-training with the ImageNet dataset increased prediction accuracy by about 10% compared to the model without pre-training. The model’s prediction ability was best promoted by pre-training datasets in the following order: Marine-PULSE ≥ ImageNet > SeabedObjects-KLSG. Our study shows that pre-training dataset categories, dataset volume, and data consistency with predicted data are crucial factors affecting pre-training outcomes. These findings set the stage for future research on automatic pipeline detection using deep learning techniques and emphasize the significance of suitable pre-training dataset selection for CNN models.