This note presents an airborne spectral imaging system and methodology used to detect, track and monitor marine mammal populations. The system is a four band multispectral imaging system using spectral bands tailored for maritime imaging. This low cost, low volume, imaging sensor can be deployed on either a small unmanned air vehicle (UAV) or any other cost efficient aircraft. Results of recent multispectral data collects over marine mammals in St. Lawrence Seaway are presented. Species present included beluga whales as well as various species of larger baleen whales. OBJECTIVESTo develop an electro-optical system that will both search for and determine the presence of whales and verify radar or acoustic detection. Finally, to identify potential data products useful to both military and non-military users in marine mammal research and inventory projects. BACKGROUNDCurrent Naval Acoustic Anti Submarine Warfare (ASW) readiness requires the nearly continual testing of new active acoustic systems and tactics as threat profiles constantly change. This testing introduces high decibel (dB) sound into the water column at frequencies utilized by nearby marine mammals. This high dB sound has the potential to disorient or directly harm these animals thus arguably making active acoustic system testing a violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. A testing program that actively seeks to avoid exposing marine mammals to high dB noise is thus desired. The end goal of this program and others like it is to better understand marine mammal migrations and behaviors, investigate a wide collection of marine mammal detection systems and document their detection performance, and determine the interconnectivity of these systems in ASW acoustic testing.Advanced Coherent Technologies, LLC (ACT) is performing work under SBIR Topic: N07-019 "Whale Search Radar" in support of the Naval Airfare War Center and ASW military testing and training activities involving midrange sonar (AN/SQS-53C and AN/SQS-56). This agreement between parties allows scientists and engineers to further develop mitigation management protocol that conform to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. § 4321 et. Seq., and the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA), 16 U. S. C § 1451 et seq.Research activities are on-going in the investigation and development of an electro-optical (EO) system that will image whales with sufficient resolution to detect and classify them in a timely fashion. The goal is to combine the EO imagery with computer aided detection software in the development of algorithms and methods for detecting whales such that the NAVY may eliminate and/or mitigate any damage to the whales during sonar operational exercises. These technological advancements safeguard the protection of marine environments through enhanced mitigation measures derived from near real-time data analyses and product delivery. Most importantly, our research seeks to demonstrate how passive remote sensing and detection and prediction through strategies derived from quant...

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Airborne multispectral imagery was collected over various targets on the beach and in the water in an attempt to characterize the surf zone environment with respect to electro-optical system capabilities and to assess the utility of very low cost, small multispectral systems in mine counter measures (MCM) and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance applications. The data was collected by PAR Government Systems Corporation (PGSC) at the Army Corps of Engineers Field Research Facility at Duck North Carolina and on the beaches of Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base in Southern California. PGSC flew the first two of its MANTIS (Mission Adaptable Narrowband Tunable Imaging Sensor) systems. Both MANTIS systems were flown in an IR -red -green -blue (700, 600, 550, 480 nm) configuration from altitudes ranging from 200 to 700 meters. Data collected has been lightly analyzed and a surf zone index (SZI) defined and calculated. This index allows mine hunting system performance measurements in the surf zone to be normalized by environmental conditions. The SZI takes into account water clarity, wave energy, and foam persistence.

PAR Government Systems Corporation (PAR) has deployed their turret mounted Mission Adaptable Narrowband Tunable Imaging System (MANTIS-3T) and collected nearly 300 GBytes of multispectral data over mine-like targets in a desert environment in support of mine counter measures (MCM), intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance study applications. Multispectral processing algorithms such as RX and SEM have demonstrated success with hyperspectral data when searching for large targets. As target size decreases relative to sensor resolution, false alarms increase and performance declines. Detection of recently placed mine-like objects, however, can be enhanced by adding a temporal dimension to the spectral processing. An automated color-to-color and frame-to-frame registration algorithm has been developed as a first, and required, step to an automated multispectral change detection algorithm. The automated registration algorithms are used to process multispectral desert data collected with MANTIS-3T. Performance results and processing difficulties are reported.

Radiance Technologies, Inc. has tested and demonstrated real-time collection and on-board processing of Multispectral Imagery (MSI). Further, the test and demonstration consisted of a real-time downlink from the aircraft to the ground station and real-time display of the processed data product. The multispectral imagery was collected with a low-cost, low-profile MSI sensor, MANTIS-3T, from PAR Government Systems. The data product was created from output of a novel spectral algorithm combination that increases the probability of detection and decreases the false alarm rates for specific objects of interest. The display product was a compressed true color image in which the detected objects were delineated with red pixels. A description of the end-to-end solution, issues encountered as well as their resolution, and results will be discussed. †