A Large-Scale Systematic Evaluation of Algorithms Using Ground-Penetrating Radar for Landmine Detection and Discrimination

Abstract

A variety of algorithms for the detection of landmines and discrimination between landmines and clutter objects have been presented. We discuss four quite different approaches in using data collected by a vehicle-mounted ground-penetrating radar sensor to detect landmines and distinguish them from clutter objects. One uses edge features in a hidden Markov model; the second uses geometric features in a feed-forward order-weighted average network; the third employs spectral features as its basis; and the fourth clusters edge histograms. We present the results of a large-scale cross-validation evaluation that uses a diverse set of data collected over 41 807.57 m2 of ground, including 1593 mine encounters. Finally, we discuss the results of that ranking and what one can conclude concerning the performance of these four algorithms in various settings.