A Comparative Study of Different CNN Models and Transfer Learning Effect for Underwater Object Classification in Side-Scan Sonar Images

With the development of deep learning techniques, convolutional neural networks (CNN) are increasingly being used in image recognition for marine surveys and underwater object classification. Automatic recognition of targets on side-scan sonar (SSS) images using CNN can improve recognition accuracy and efficiency. However, the vast selection of CNN models makes it challenging to select models for target recognition in SSS images. Therefore, this paper aims to compare different CNN models' prediction accuracy and computational performance comprehensively. First, four traditional CNN models were applied to train and predict the same submarine SSS dataset using both the original model and models with transfer learning methods. Then, we examined and studied the prediction accuracy and computation performance of four CNN models. Results showed that transfer learning enhances the accuracy of all CNN models, with lesser improvements for AlexNet and VGG-16 and greater improvements for GoogleNet and ResNet101. GoogleNet has the highest prediction of accuracy (100% in the train dataset and 94.27% in the test dataset) and good computational difficulty. The findings of this work are useful for future model selection in target recognition in SSS images.