Scene classification relying on images is essential in many systems and applications related to remote sensing. The scientific interest in scene classification from remotely collected images is increasing, and many datasets and algorithms are being developed. The introduction of convolutional neural networks (CNN) and other deep learning techniques contributed to vast improvements in the accuracy of image scene classification in such systems. To classify the scene from areal images, we used a two-stream deep architecture. We performed the first part of the classification, the feature extraction, using pre-trained CNN that extracts deep features of aerial images from different network layers: the average pooling layer or some of the previous convolutional layers. Next, we applied feature concatenation on extracted features from various neural networks, after dimensionality reduction was performed on enormous feature vectors. We experimented extensively with different CNN architectures, to get optimal results. Finally, we used the Support Vector Machine (SVM) for the classification of the concatenated features. The competitiveness of the examined technique was evaluated on two real-world datasets: UC Merced and WHU-RS. The obtained classification accuracies demonstrate that the considered method has competitive results compared to other cutting-edge techniques.

A method for the instantaneous frequency (IF) estimation of a monocomponent nonlinear frequency modulated (FM) signal based on the pseudo Wigner-Ville distribution (PWVD) with an adaptive window width is presented. In order to improve the IF estimation accuracy, the original sliding pair-wise intersection of confidence intervals (SPICI) rule has been modified. An additional criterion for a proper window width selection is introduced, which takes into account the amount of overlap between the current and the previous confidence interval relative to the current interval length. The presented results show that the proposed method outperforms the original SPICI-based method by up to 42% in terms of the mean absolute error and up to 73% in terms of the mean squared error. It is also less sensitive to the window widths set selection than the original method.

Analysis of non-stationary signals in a noisy environment is a challenging research topic in many fields often requiring simultaneous signal decomposition in the time and frequency domain. This paper proposes a method for the classification of noisy non-stationary time-series signals based on Cohen’s class of their time-frequency representations (TFRs) and deep learning algorithms. We demonstrated the proposed approach on the example of detecting gravitational-wave (GW) signals in intensive real-life, non-stationary, non-white, and non-Gaussian noise. For this purpose, we prepared a dataset based on the actual data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detector and the synthetic GW signals obtained by realistic simulations. Next, 12 different TFRs from Cohen’s class were calculated from the original noisy time-series data and used to train three state-of-the-art convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures: ResNet-101, Xception, and EfficientNet. The obtained classification results are compared to those achieved by the base model trained on the original time series. Analysis of the results suggests that the proposed approach combining deep CNN architectures with Cohen’s class TFRs yields high values of performance metrics and significantly improves the classification performance compared to the base model. The TFR-CNN models achieve the values of the classification accuracy of up to 97.10%, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC AUC) of up to 0.9885, the recall of up to 95.87%, the precision of up to 99.51%, the F1 score of up to 97.03%, and the area under the precision-recall curve (PR AUC) of up to 0.9920. This classification performance is obtained on the dataset in which the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values of the raw, noisy time-series signals range from −123.46 to −2.27 dB. Therefore, this study suggests that using alternative TFRs of Cohen’s class can improve the deep learning-based detection of non-stationary GW signals in an intensive noise environment. Moreover, the proposed approach can also be a viable solution for deep learning-based analysis of numerous other noisy non-stationary signals in different practical applications.

In this paper, we present automatic, deep-learning methods for pipeline detection in underwater environments. Seafloor pipelines are critical infrastructure for oil and gas transport. The inspection of those pipelines is required to verify their integrity and determine the need for maintenance. Underwater conditions present a harsh environment that is challenging for image recognition due to light refraction and absorption, poor visibility, scattering, and attenuation, often causing poor image quality. Modern machine-learning object detectors utilize Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), requiring a training dataset of sufficient quality. In the paper, six different deep-learning CNN detectors for underwater object detection were trained and tested: five are based on the You Only Look Once (YOLO) architectures (YOLOv4, YOLOv4-Tiny, CSP-YOLOv4, YOLOv4@Resnet, YOLOv4@DenseNet), and one on the Faster Region-based CNN (RCNN) architecture. The models’ performances were evaluated in terms of detection accuracy, mean average precision (mAP), and processing speed measured with the Frames Per Second (FPS) on a custom dataset containing underwater pipeline images. In the study, the YOLOv4 outperformed other models for underwater pipeline object detection resulting in an mAP of 94.21% with the ability to detect objects in real-time. Based on the literature review, this is one of the pioneering works in this field.

A method for components instantaneous frequency (IF) estimation of multicomponent signals in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is proposed. The method combines a new proposed modification of a blind source separation (BSS) algorithm for components separation, with the improved adaptive IF estimation procedure based on the modified sliding pairwise intersection of confidence intervals (ICI) rule. The obtained results are compared to the multicomponent signal ICI-based IF estimation method for various window types and SNRs, showing the estimation accuracy improvement in terms of the mean squared error (MSE) by up to 23%. Furthermore, the highest improvement is achieved for low SNRs values, when many of the existing methods fail.

The paper proposes a segmentation and classification technique for fracture detection in X-ray images. This novel rotation-invariant method introduces the concept of local entropy for de-noising and removing tissue from the analysed X-ray images, followed by an improved procedure for image segmentation and the detection of regions of interest. The proposed local Shannon entropy was calculated for each image pixel using a sliding 2D window. An initial image segmentation was performed on the entropy representation of the original image. Next, a graph theory-based technique was implemented for the purpose of removing false bone contours and improving the edge detection of long bones. Finally, the paper introduces a classification and localisation procedure for fracture detection by tracking the difference between the extracted contour and the estimation of an ideal healthy one. The proposed hybrid method excels at detecting small fractures (which are hard to detect visually by a radiologist) in the ulna and radius bones—common injuries in children. Therefore, it is imperative that a radiologist inspecting the X-ray image receives a warning from the computerised X-ray analysis system, in order to prevent false-negative diagnoses. The proposed method was applied to a data-set containing 860 X-ray images of child radius and ulna bones (642 fracture-free images and 218 images containing fractures). The obtained results showed the efficiency and robustness of the proposed approach, in terms of segmentation quality and classification accuracy and precision (up to $91.16\%$ and $86.22\%$ , respectively).