Identifying pancake ice and computing pancake size distribution in aerial photographs

摘要

This paper presents a processing scheme for the fast computation of pancake ice size distribution from aerial photographs. The test image used in this study was collected by the Twin Otter of the Naval Research Laboratory which assisted the cruise of the research ship "Sikuliaq" while carrying out an extensive study of the autumn sea ice in the southern Beaufort Sea in 2015. The processing scheme is composed of the following steps: ⅰ) image enhancement, ⅱ) nonlinear support vector machine (SVM) analysis, and ⅲ) ice size distribution computation. The result confirms the advantage of having immediate information on pancake ice size distribution during a field campaign in the Arctic.