Estimation of pack ice concentration using histogram peak analysis and image subdivision

Abstract

Numerous studies on icebreaking vessels have been reported recently owing to a potential increase in the number of passable Arctic routes. Model ship tests of pack ice models in ice basins have been actively conducted to investigate the performance of different icebreakers. The estimation of the pack ice concentration is critical as pack ice directly affects the performance of such experiment. In this paper, an algorithm that automatically determines the concentration of pack ice is proposed. This study aimed to measure the area of pack ice, based on digital images captured in an ice basin, using an image processing technique. A local binarization technique, coupled with image subdivision based on a quadtree structure, was developed. Independent thresholds were calculated for the subdivided images and rapid image separation was achieved. To demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed method, the concentration results obtained with the developed algorithm were compared with the manually measured data, with both results and data showing good agreement. The main advantage of the developed algorithm is that it facilitates the near-real-time estimation of the pack ice concentration from captured digital images.