Detecting elliptical structures in underwater images

摘要

In this paper, the problem of detecting particular under- water structures, e.g., anodes used to join together separated sec- tions of a pipeline, from visual images is addressed. Images are acquired by an autonomous underwater vehicle during sea-bottom surveys for pipeline inspection. Anodes with different characteristics, e.g., material, size, color, etc., can be found on the same pipeline but all are characterized by the same visual feature, i.e., an elliptical arc. To this end, a voting-based method able to detect elliptical arcs on the image plane is used to locate accurately anodes along the pipleine.