Chesapeake Times

Technical Review, Issue 19

Oct 2024

Sometimes the wait is worth it. Microwave popcorn. In two minutes, the bag is filled with a treat. As the clock gets closer to the two-minute mark, we still hear the pop.pop.pop. Ah. Still a few more kernels to go. Let’s wait a little longer.

Pop……Pop………..Pop. looks to be done.

But there’s always the ones on the bottom, that just haven’t cooked yet.

Let’s wait another few seconds. …. Pop……. One more!

Do we wait longer, or are we happy with the filled bag right now? I’m sure there are a few uncooked kernels still there. It just wasn’t their time to pop.

Like the bag of fresh popcorn, the wait is now over for the release of SonarWiz 8.1.0. The last few weeks were tough, working on the final feature or the last bug to be addressed. This update has more than 130 updates – probably the largest release we ever made. The introduction of the ATR, faster drawing and export, updates to processing of sub bottom and bathymetry, and more… A few icons moved around, as we added new features and grouped things differently. We spent two weeks of solid testing, to ensure we caught any unintended bugs that might have slipped in during the updates.

At 130 updates, I think we did well.

Features that didn’t make it in this release will go in next time. Unlike the uncooked kernel on the bottom of the bag, we’ll get it popped, in the next release later this year. We’re going to show off this release and how it works at the Winter training later this year. It will be held in Nashville, TN (ok some bias in that location) December 9-12. We updated the schedule a bit, adding in a new session on Monday afternoon, and a full afternoon of boat demonstrations at the end of the week. A lot of learning during the day and capped off with music at night along Broadway. A fun week for all. Registration link is on the website.

Hope to see you there!

New Features and Technical Notes

Faster Tiling Output Part 2 ................................................. Christopher Favreau, CTO Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) in SonarWiz ............. David Finlayson, Chief Scientist

Bathy Processing ............................................................... Harold Orlinsky, General Manager

Geodesy Updates/Improvements ...................................... Jonathan Fleetwood, Engineer

Automated Precision ......................................................... Alex Nowak, Support Specialist

Introducing Brian ............................................................... Brian Bradley, Support Specialist

Faster Tiling Output Part 2

In the last CTI Times Newsletter, my colleague Jonathan Fleetwood wrote about the Faster Tiling Output he was working on for the SonarWiz V8.01.00 release. Many CTI users use the Tiled GeoImage exports for the final deliverable product. One of the development goals this year was to improve the speed of sonar data rendering. We were surprised to receive reports from our customers that SonarWiz 8 was taking longer to export tiles than SonarWiz 7.10.2. When we started investigating why this was happening we observed that it typically took ~30% longer to export the same data using the same settings in SonarWiz 8. 

After digging into the issue by comparing times between SonarWiz versions and examining how much time each section of the export code took we found that the increase in time was coming from a library that we use for working with GeoTIFF and tiling large images. We had upgraded this library in SonarWiz V7.11.02 and again in 8.01.00 to improve compatibility with the geodesy library in SonarWiz. A side effect of doing this investigation is that we learned that SonarWiz was spending more time creating the tiles in the 2^nd stage than it does rendering and saving the tiles in the 1^st stage of a 2 stage process (outlined in the previous article on Faster Tiling Output). We did some more analysis and found that we could eliminate one of the stages and save a significant amount of export time. 

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Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) in SonarWiz

SonarWiz 8.1 introduces automatic target recognition (ATR) for sidescan data. The SonarWiz ATR engine uses a Convolution Neural Network (CNN) combined with computer vision algorithms to automatically detect and measure objects in sidescan images. These object detections, or “hits”, can then be converted into SonarWiz Contacts to speed the work of processing sidescan data.

Preparing Sidescan Data for ATR

ATR object detection works best on clean, well-processed sidescan data. As with normal contact picking, you should have completed navigation adjustments and applied gain algorithms to best present your targets for detection.  Figure 1 shows an example of clean data with distinct targets both natural and man-made.

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Bathymetric Processing

In the latest version of SonarWiz, a few updates have been added to the Swath Editor program. The old saying is that if it’s not broken, don’t touch it. Probably worthwhile, but I went against the grain, and made changes to the program anyway.

Auto Rejection of Data Points

Previously the reject and accept fields were included in the Flag dialog box. It worked perfectly, except the box was huge, and you always had to find someplace on the screen to keep it open. In the latest release, the Auto Mode (Reject, Accept) are now simple settings on the ribbon bar.

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Geodesy Updates/Improvements in the Latest SonarWiz

The latest version of SonarWiz, 8.1, due to be released in a handful of days, contains a lot of improvements and fixes. I'm looking at a development board with 126 improvements, and expect to see it around 130 or so around release time. ATR, faster tiled exports with an eye toward amplitude geoimages and cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs, smaller contact image footprints, and numerous bug fixes - SonarWiz 8.1 has a lot to offer.

In 8.1 we've also made a number of improvements to our geodesy handling; I'd like to highlight a couple of them here.

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Automated Precision: How ATR Enhances

Contact Management in SonarWiz

When conducting sonar surveys, one of the key tasks for marine surveyors is to identify and catalog points of interest on the seafloor. These points, known as Contacts in SonarWiz, represent specific features detected in sonar data that may require further investigation or analysis. Here we will take an in-depth look into the role of contacts in SonarWiz, and how contacts are integrated with SonarWiz’s new Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) capabilities.

Contacts (also called Targets) provide a means by which the location and characteristics of observed objects can be captured and saved. They can range from rocks, man-made debris, and underwater structures to objects that require further inspection. Contacts have several important features:

1. Contacts include a portion of the sonar image immediately surrounding them.

2. Contacts can be captured while a sonar survey is in progress (i.e. in Real-time).

3. Contact metrics (measurements) may be determined and stored.

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Meet Brian Bradley

Our Chesapeake Times Quarterly Newsletter or blog is a tradition that provides insight and news about SonarWiz and new features that have been added to the interface. Many articles are highlights about new releases and tools that have been added since the last release or to a future release. I thought I would take a moment and point out a few of the elements that drew me to SonarWiz many years ago as I believe these features are some of the core components that make SonarWiz what it is today.

My name is Brian Bradley, and I am one of the Support Specialists at Chesapeake Technology. I started collecting Hydrographic data using sonars in 2004, when I was offered a part time job as a hydrographic Survey Tech at McKim and Creed in Wilmington, NC. I was working my way through school at Cape Fear Community College in the Marine Technology Department, which had a small focus in Hydrographic Surveying and Data Processing.

Back then, for me there were only Single Beam Echo Sounders and Analog Side Scan sonar with paper scrolls. The equipment was quite robust, and the user had to be as well. We had some digital processing; however, I remember spending days crawling around on the floor with a paper scroll rolled out down the hallway while taking measurements with a scale. For the few Side Scan jobs I worked on, the data set was printed on paper and another user had to digitize it with a drafting computer.

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