Continental Shelf Research 31 (2011) 20002011

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Continental Shelf Research

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Research papers

Acoustic seabed segmentation for echosounders through direct statistical clustering of seabed echoes
L.J. Hamilton n
Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), 13 Garden Street, Eveleigh, New South Wales 2015, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 2 February 2010 Received in revised form 18 April 2011 Accepted 10 October 2011 Available online 20 October 2011 Keywords: Acoustic seabed classication Echosounder Statistical clustering

a b s t r a c t
A new method is presented for inferring seabed type from the properties of seabed echoes stimulated by echosounders. The methodology currently used classies echoes indirectly through feature extraction, usually in conjunction with dimensional reduction techniques such as Principal Components Analysis. The features or principal components derived from them are classied by statistical clustering or other means into groups with similar sets of mathematical properties. However, a simpler technique is to directly cluster the echoes themselves. A priori modelling or curve tting, feature extraction, and dimensional reduction are not required, simplifying the processing and analysis chain, and eliminating data distortions. In effect the echoes are treated as geometrical entities, which are classied by their shapes and positions. Direct clustering places the analysis focus on the actual echoes, not on proxy parameters or mathematical techniques. This allows simple and direct evaluations of results, without the need to work in abstract mathematical spaces of unknown relation to echo properties. The direct clustering method for seabed echoes is demonstrated with echosounder data obtained in Balls Head Bay, Sydney Harbour, Australia, an area with mud, sand, and shell beds. Crown Copyright & 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Acoustic seabed classication is the process of inferring seabed type by its acoustic response to active sonar. Areas with the same acoustic signature are expected to have the same seabed type or class, e.g. mud, sand, gravel, rock, or seagrass. Grab samples and diver or video observations may be taken towards the geographic midpoints of the different classes to attribute physical descriptions to them. These descriptions may be categorical, e.g. sparse seagrass and sand, or quantitative, e.g. median grain size. Active sonar types include side scan sonar, multibeam echosounders, and conventional echosounders (depth sounders or fathometers). These three sonar types typically employ acoustic frequencies (50 kHz upwards) and energies that have relatively low penetration into the seabed, e.g. 0.1 m at 200 kHz (Preston, 2006), and their returns largely carry information on surcial seabed properties related to roughness and hardness (more correctly acoustic impedance). Sub-bottom prolers operating at lower frequencies, e.g. 8 kHz, are used to obtain information on sediment layering. A large body of literature exists on acoustic seabed classication (e.g. Hamilton, 2005; Penrose et al., 2005). However, it is still an

active area of research. The present paper is concerned with practical seabed classication from echosounders. Echoes received from echosounders are typically treated as though coming from a single point on the seabed beneath the sounder transducer, although a circular or elliptical area is usually ensonied. Although not having the wide coverage of swathe sonars, the lower cost of echosounders and their simple nature continues to make them extremely attractive for seabed classication. They can also be used in tandem with swathe instrumentation. There are two principal types of echosounder based seabed classication methods: one using multiple echo energy characteristics, and the other using a rst echo shape approach. A description and comparison of these two types of systems is given in Hamilton et al. (1999). The present paper demonstrates a new method for rst echo classication. 1.1. The rst echo approach to acoustic seabed classication In the 1990s the Ocean Mapping Group of the University of New Brunswick investigated seabed classication from echosounders through statistical parameters (e.g. moments) of seabed echoes (Mayer, 2000). Based on this work Quester Tangent Corporation (QTC) of Canada subsequently developed the hardware and software system QTC VIEWTM. Following compensation for depth/ angle sampling artefacts, the system calculates a large number of (redundant) echo features (1 6 6), followed by reduction to three

Tel.: 61 2 9381 0131; fax: 61 2 9381 0030. E-mail address: les.hamilton@dsto.defence.gov.au

0278-4343/$ - see front matter Crown Copyright & 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.csr.2011.10.004

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principal components (known as Q-factors), with clustering or simulated annealing of the three principal components used to obtain segmentation of the data (Preston et al., 2004). A large number of parameters are used because the key parameters may vary in unknown ways from area to area (Preston et al., 2004). Principal Components Analysis (PCA) is relied on to produce the combinations of features, which best describe a particular dataset in some statistical sense. 166 features are derived from cumulative amplitude and ratios of samples of cumulative amplitude, amplitude quantiles, amplitude histogram, power spectrum, and wavelet packet transform. However, the actual parameters are not disclosed. The technique is typically very successful in classication, although problems are encountered over areas of variable bathymetry (Hamilton et al., 1999; Biffard et al., 2005). QTC presently claim that use of three principal components typically allows for 90% of the observed variance (Preston et al., 2004). A previous claim was 95% (Quester Tangent, 2002), but it is not known if either of these gures is adequate for seabed classication. Note that restriction to the rst three principal components is an articial limitation on the processing, implemented to provide a pseudo 3-D visualisation of the components. Others have adopted the general rst echo QTC approach. Durand et al. (2002) used feature extraction, PCA, and K-means clustering to produce two and four seabed classes. Van Walree et al. (2005) characterised echoes by six features (echo energy, second central moment, skewness, two measures of fractal dimension, and spectral skewness), followed by PCA to produce three principal components, and clustering to produce four classes. Tegowski (2005) clustered on three features (volume backscatter coefcient, spectral width, and fractal dimension) to produce four classes. 1.2. Physically based inverse modelling Practical approaches to acoustic seabed classication are presently phenomenological by necessity. Particular efforts to model echo envelopes through physical principles and inversion techniques have been made by Clarke et al. (1988), Lurton and Pouliquen (1992), and Sternlicht and de Moustier (2003). Sternlicht and de Moustier (2003) describe several other works. The most comprehensive effort is the BORIS model (Canepa et al., 1997), which continues to be developed. However, models presently cannot reproduce the complexities of the real world. To quote from Canepa et al. (1997), The physical mechanisms occurring during the interaction of acoustic waves and the seaoor surface and volume are still not completely understood and quantied. Quite apart from this the real seabed is not everywhere well enough behaved to accommodate the simplications and idealisations of modelling. Models consequently experience ambiguity (Sternlicht and de Moustier, 2003; Preston, 2009). They are useful in exploring and explaining general concepts, but not presently for practical applications. 1.3. A different approach In the present paper a fundamental departure is made from previous approaches to single beam seabed classication. Statistical characterisation of echoes through reduction to a set of proxy features is not used nor is inverse modelling. The echoes themselves are clustered directly, without the need for imposition of particular mathematical or statistical models, curve tting, feature extraction, Principal Components Analysis, linear discriminant analysis, factor analysis, multiregression techniques, or any other approximation, distortion, or abstraction of the data. The echoes are essentially treated as geometric entities (mathematically they are single-valued curves), and calculation of

proxies is unnecessary. This follows an approach pursued by Hamilton (2007) for classication of cumulative grain size curves. The approach has subsequently been applied to oceanic windwave energy spectra (Hamilton, 2009) and multibeam backscatter curves (Hamilton and Parnum, 2011). The simple concept of using clustering to classify single-valued curves directly does not seem to exist in the literature, possibly because some types of curves are not amenable to such treatment, and because some classication methods, e.g. factor analysis, may suffer from self-correlation effects in adjacent data values. The direct clustering method for echosounder seabed classication allows more informed data processing, since it places emphasis on actual echo characteristics rather than on mathematical techniques and proxies with unknown relation to echo or seabed properties.

2. Data and preprocessing 2.1. Balls Head Bay study area Fig. 1 charts the study area of Balls Head Bay in Sydney Harbour. The bay forms a good natural laboratory, as it has a wide range of seabed types in a small area, ranging from soft, watery muds, muddy sands, gravelly sands, shell beds, to rock. Variable bathymetry and topography are also available, with at areas, rock walls, rocky-gravelly headlands, and scour holes. The northern part of the bay is less than 10 m in depth, with shallow muddy sands in the northwest, and soft mud in the east. The southern part of the bay is 1315 m deep, with a number of tidally maintained scour holes, including a 33 m hole off Balls Head. The southern area is mostly sandy mud, with some clean ne sand patches. Shells from dead mussels and thick-walled mud oysters are found widely distributed over the southern area. The shells form strong acoustic reectors and scatterers. 2.2. Echosounder data Single beam echo data were obtained in Balls Head Bay over 1921 October 2004 with a Furuno FE-4300 200 kHz shnder

Fig. 1. The Balls Head Bay study area in Sydney Harbour. Depths are shown in metres.

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echosounder and QTC VIEWTM 4 hardware system. Beamwidth (3 db points) is 101 and pulse duration is 0.2 ms (Furuno Electric Co. Ltd.). System gain and depth settings were unchanged during the surveys. Constant vessel speed was used whenever possible to minimise possible effects of ow noise and engine noise (see Hamilton et al., 1999). 2.3. Echo formation The details of echo formation are well understood in general terms, having been published many times in different forms and at different levels of complexity (e.g. Lurton and Pouliquen, 1992). A summary is given as follows. Because of wavefront curvature a ping from an echosounder with a wide angle beam ensonies rst a circle on the seabed, then progressively ensonies annuli of increasing radii and lower grazing angles. If an amplitude envelope detector is used, then the signal recorded over a sampling interval is the total specular and backscatter return from some particular annulus. The rst part of the resulting echo shape is a peak dominantly from specular return, and the second part is a decaying tail principally from incoherent backscatter contributions. Echo energies and shapes depend on seabed acoustic impedance (acoustic hardness) and physical roughness. A smooth at bottom returns the incident ping with its shape largely unchanged, but greater penetration into softer sediments attenuates the signal strength more than acoustically harder sediments. Rougher sediment surfaces provide more backscattered energy from the outer parts of the beam than smoother surfaces (which simply reect the energy away from the direction of the transducer). Consequently a rougher surface is expected to have a lower echo peak and a longer tail than a smoother surface of the same composition. The length and energy of the echo tail provide a direct measure of seabed roughness. Acoustic penetration into the seabed and presence of subsurface reectors can affect echo shape through volume reverberation. The echo shape also depends on echosounder characteristics such as frequency, ping duration, ping shape, output power, beam width, and beam pattern. Spherical spreading and absorption corrections are necessary, depending on sounder frequency and survey depth. Surveys should be executed at constant vessel speed to avoid changing background noise values, and echosounder gain and system settings should not be changed during a survey (Hamilton et al., 1999). On the average, these factors then affect all echoes in the same way, and their actual effects need not be known. Systems then need not be calibrated in order to be used, and beam patterns need not be measured, one of the advantages of echosounder based classication. Results from different systems are not directly compatible, although correspondences can be found in some cases (Hamilton et al., 1999). Return echo shapes can vary markedly over a small time interval, even for the same bottom type. As a result of ship and sensor movements and natural variability the returns from any particular angle are of a random nature, sometimes adding and sometimes subtracting as bottom facets lying at slightly different angles and depths are encountered. In particular, returns from harder surfaces such as rock tend to have greater roughness and more random orientation of seabed facets than other sediments, resulting in widely varying return shapes and energies. Echoes are also subject to noise, natural environmental variability, and echosounder instability. To obtain acoustic signal stability sets of pings are usually averaged. Over rougher terrain simple averaging may not help ping stability, and can act to reduce overall ping levels from their true value, causing rocky surfaces to be classed as muds (Hamilton et al., 1999; Hamilton, 2001). In this circumstance a different echo compositing method can be used, e.g. Hamilton et al. (1999) suggested using the average of

the one-third highest values in a ping set, under the assumption that higher energy returns are least affected by roughness and vessel motion effects. Calibration of a particular acoustic seabed classication system is made by visiting areas with known seabed type, and noting or recording the system response at those sites. System calibration and classication then become a function of the bottom sampling strategy. Alternatively, seabed sampling may be targeted to areas with spatially homogeneous acoustic seabed responses. The direct clustering methods of the present paper are suited to the second strategy. Classication can depend on the purpose of the user e.g. a mapping of sh habitat could produce a different classication from a mapping allied to grainsize. It is the general experience that useful classications can be obtained with echosounders if due care is taken, although calibration is not always easy or unambiguous (Hamilton, 2001), as particular echo shapes need not have a unique cause. Shell components in particular can cause unpredictable returns. Because of ambiguity, a calibration for one area can not be used for other geographical areas. This generally precludes the use of a library of seabed responses to indicate seabed type, except perhaps in very general terms. Further comments are given in Hamilton (2001). 2.4. Preprocessing Two operations are necessary before echoes can be classied. The rst allows for dilation or contraction of echoes with depth, the result of using a xed sampling interval in time, rather than sampling at a set of evenly spaced angles (Caughey and Kirlin, 1996). The second operation averages or stacks sets of echoes to remove variability. It has been found better to calculate echo parameters from echo stacks, rather than to calculate parameters from individual echoes and then average (e.g. Preston et al., 2004), also the experience of the present author. 2.5. Effects of sampling artefacts and depth on echo shape and duration Echo duration is dependent on depth, through wavefront curvature and echosounder beamwidth. Contributions to echo duration also arise from echosounder pulse duration, sediment macro-roughness, and volume reverberation from penetration into the sediment (e.g. Preston, 2003, 2006). The duration due to beamwidth alone is (2d/c)(1/cos(D/2) 1), where d is the depth measured vertically, c is the sound speed, and D is the echosounder beam width (nominally specied between the 3 db points). If a constant sampling rate fs is used, more samples will be taken between any two particular angles as depth increases, causing signal dilation, even for seabeds with similar sediment properties. In order for two returns at different depths d and d0 to maintain the same time/angle relationship the data are resampled as fresamp (d0/d)fs, where d0 is a reference depth near the mean survey depth, and fs is the original sampling rate (Caughey and Kirlin, 1996; Preston, 2006). This correction treats echo duration as arising entirely from beamwidth geometry. Output echosounder pulse duration and extensions to echo duration from roughness and volume reverberation must be small in comparison. When the contribution to echo duration at a particular depth due to roughness, penetration, and output pulse duration is signicant compared to echo duration calculated from beamwidth geometry, echo durations are no longer proportional to depth. The Caughey and Kirlin (1996) correction is then not adequate for the depth/sampling compensation. This occurs in shallow water, which could be dened through some fraction of the echo duration caused by beamwidth alone, e.g less than 0.8 may be considered reasonable. Preston (2006) outlines a

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method to make approximate corrections to echo durations in the shallow water regime. This method adopts a nominal penetration depth, and a nominal seabed roughness, in order to calculate correction factors for the time/angle sampling artefacts. For the Furuno FE-4300 200 kHz echosounder, with nominal 3 db beamwidth (D) of 101, and pulse duration of 0.2 ms, echo duration due to beamwidth alone is less than output pulse duration for depths less than 39.3 m. Contributions to echo duration from roughness and sediment penetration can only further reduce the relative beamwidth contribution. Effective beamwidth may be wider than 101, as beams do not suddenly cut off at the 3 db points. For effective beamwidth 151 (taken as an extreme case for the nominal 101) and nominal seabed roughness scale and penetration depth both set to 0.1 m (taken from Preston (2006) for 200 kHz), echo duration due to beamwidth is less than 0.8 of total echo duration shallower than 163 m. Since maximum survey depth is 33 m in a scour hole (Fig. 1), with average depth of 11 12 m, the calculations indicate that the shallow water form of corrections (Preston, 2003, 2006) is required for the Balls Head Bay data. Distortion may be minimised by compensating echoes to a depth midway between minimum and maximum survey depths, which for Balls Head Bay is close to 15 m. For the nominal roughness scale and penetration depth both set to 0.1 m, the Preston (2006) calculations indicate that echo duration for 5 m depth should be dilated to 110% compared to echoes from 15 m depth. Echo durations from 25 m should be compressed to 91% of the measured duration. For 10 and 20 m depths the adjustment referenced to 15 m is 5% rather than 10%. These are relatively small adjustments compared to the variability typically seen in echo durations from any one depth (as the data will show). This is especially so, given the compromise nature of the shallow water corrections. For these reasons it was decided not to apply any depth compensation corrections to echo durations. This might not be viable for a wider depth range or different echosounder characteristics. 2.6. Echo selection, averaging, and energy normalisation Echoes are detected and selected for averaging or compositing by methods described in Hamilton (2001; Section 5.1). An individual ping record begins with the high energy echosounder output ping, followed by transducer ringing, then the rst echo, and multiple echoes. The ping record ends at the start of the next output ping. Calculations avoid the ringing, the duration of which must be determined for each transducer. The background noise level is calculated, then processing steps backwards from the end of a ping record (this helps to avoid any spikes and multiple returns occurring after the rst echo), and the most energetic peak above the noise in the individual ping record is found. The peak is calculated as a running average of three or more values. The echo is accepted only if the peak exceeds some threshold of the maximum possible system amplitude range less the noise, e.g. 5%, and also if it exceeds the duration of the output ping. These two criteria act to eliminate spikes and poorly formed lower energy echoes. Processing then steps backwards from the peak to nd the start of the echo, then forwards from the peak to nd the end of the echo. Starts and ends may be found by tests of the form x of y consecutive values must be above/below a threshold. Ten ping records are processed. Echoes are aligned to have a common start time, and are individually corrected for spherical spreading if this has not already taken place in hardware. Absorption was ignored for the relatively shallow survey depths. Echoes are normalised to have uncalibrated energy of one unit. Preston (2006) normalises peak amplitude to one unit. Both normalizations remove relative

amplitude information between echoes, although this can be recovered. If three or more good echoes are found in the ping set, then the good echoes are averaged or composited, otherwise the ping set is discarded. A check is made that consecutive average echo depths do not differ by a depth dependent threshold. This avoids some errors and prevents averaging of echoes on steeper slopes, or when passing from at areas to channels or holes. These techniques allow fully automatic (and real-time) selection of echoes. User intervention is not required, so long as it is accepted that occasional errors may occur. For means of compositing echoes other than simple averaging, see Hamilton (2001). The 32,536 raw echoes were processed to provide 3149 averaged echoes.

3. Methods 3.1. The CLARA statistical clustering algorithm The statistical clustering algorithm employed is the CLARA (Clustering Large Applications) algorithm of Kaufman and Rousseeuw (1990). The present analysis uses FORTRAN code for CLARA downloaded from the Internet at http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/ general/clusnd. CLARA is also available in other languages and in several statistics packages. CLARA is a general clustering algorithm, and was not designed to cluster curves. It was shown to be suitable for this purpose by Hamilton (2007, 2009), subject to some limitations, and subject to choice of distance metric. This approach is fundamentally different from the conventional concept of clustering, which treats data objects as vectors of coordinates in a multi-dimensional space, not as curves. In simple terms curves are here considered to be sets of connected points with the same units, for which the order of points is important (abscissa values increase monotonically), and which may describe a physical phenomenon. Curves are required to be single-valued. Examples are wind-wave energy spectra. The difference in the conventional concept of statistical clustering and the concept of statistical clustering of single-valued curves is more than a mathematical nicety. For clustering of curves with the Manhattan metric, a simple 2-D geometric explanation or validation of the action of the clustering arises. For two curves, the Manhattan distance metric measures the difference in area bounded by the curves with the abscissa (Hamilton, 2007). Other clustering metrics, e.g. entropy, do not have a geometrical interpretation. CLARA is used to place echoes into different groups or clusters. Each group contains echoes of similar shape, and each group has a different basic echo shape than other groups. A distance metric, e.g. Euclidian or Manhattan, is used to decide whether echoes are similar or dissimilar in properties. An echo is assigned to a group if this optimises a global cost function (see the next paragraph). Each curve in the entire data set is assigned to one (and only one) of the groups. The individual curve most closely approximating the central tendency of a cluster is termed a medoid (Kaufman and Rousseeuw, 1990). The CLARA algorithm uses a k-medoids clustering approach. The measure of the effectiveness of a clustering determined by k representative objects is dened as the sum of distances (e.g. Manhattan) between each object and the most similar representative object or medoid. Representative objects are selected by an iterative approach. The rst representative object is the one for which the sum of distances to all other objects is the minimum. This object is the most centrally located in the set of objects. This object is retained, and the next representative object is similarly selected to minimise the sum of distances. When k objects have been selected the initial set of representative objects is improved by swapping each representative object with all other non-representative objects, and by

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calculating the value of the clustering for each case. The representative object is replaced if the overall sum of distances is minimised. This process is continued iteratively until no more improvement is obtained. Because all possible replacements are considered in this iteration process, results do not depend on the order that objects are input to the CLARA algorithm, unlike K-means algorithms. 3.2. Methodology for the CLARA algorithm to cluster curves A methodology for optimum use of CLARA for clustering of curves is developed in Hamilton (2007, 2009). A combination of non-standardisation of parameters and Manhattan distance metric was found to produce best results. An alternative metric is Euclidian, but this can over accentuate differences between curves. However, standardisation allows identication of outlier curves and sets of curves most different from others. This facility can be very useful in identifying more unusual seabed types, particularly those occupying only small spatial areas, and in revealing data errors. Another useful characteristic of CLARA clusters is that they appear independent of data numbers. Clusters holding very small numbers of curves can arise in classication of large data sets if curves have properties geometrically different from other curves (Hamilton, 2007, 2009). Acoustic seabed classication methods are typically only able to form four or ve useful classes. Estimation of the number of classes present in a data set may be made by quasi-independent statistical estimators used in conjunction with the clustering. Kaufman and Rousseeuw (1990) supply a Silhouette Coefcient for this purpose. The user clusters from two groups upwards until a maximum value in the coefcient is passed, with the maximum potentially indicating the optimal number of clusters. However, Hamilton (2007) did not nd this coefcient useful for data sets for which clearly separated clusters did not exist. A more effective method of assessing cluster numbers is to cluster from two groups upwards until no more useful information is obtained in clustering space (revealed by examining overplots of medoids, and overplots of all echoes in a cluster), or in geographical space. Requesting more clusters than indicated by some particular statistical indicator is not in violation of statistics or statistical methods. In effect it simply means that the particular informal statistic to estimate number of clusters in a data set has been relaxed or modied (Hamilton, 2006). A feature of CLARA useful for classication of curves is that it can successfully partition a set of similarly shaped curves forming a quasi-continuum in their space (Hamilton, 2007, 2009). Some algorithms cannot do this in a sensible manner, and CLARA itself was not intended to be used for this purpose. Echoes may form a quasi-continuum when seabed properties change gradually from one place to another, rather than jumping from one type to a completely different type. In this circumstance as many or as few clusters may be requested of CLARA as the user nds useful to follow the evolution or spatial distributions of the seabed properties. It follows that there is usually no such thing as an absolute number of clusters for a geodata set. The optimal number of clusters in some statistical sense may not be optimal in the geographic domain. A good example of this is given in Hamilton (2007). The Silhouette coefcient indicated that three clusters existed in a set of cumulative grain size curves. The three clusters corresponded to major visible groupings or divisions in the data, but a manual analysis had formed 20 clusters. The CLARA algorithm was requested to form 20 clusters, and a very good clustering resulted which was superior to the manual clustering. The effectiveness of the clustering can be checked by the following analysis chain. (1) examine overplots of cluster medoids, (2) examine overplots of the curves forming each cluster for uniformity of properties (shape, location, and central

tendency), (3) examine the resulting geographical distributions of classes. GIS techniques aid the latter examinations. It is usually better to request many clusters, rather than a few, for large data sets. If too many clusters have been requested, indicated, e.g., if fragmentation is observed in geospace, then similar clusters can be amalgamated, or a lower number of clusters can be requested. Not requesting enough clusters can force curves with different properties into the same cluster, and can suppress outlier detection. Data exploration is an essential part of any examination of large data sets. (4) The nal part of the analysis chain is groundtruthing. Note however, that because the mappings are directly related to echo shapes, not to echo features, in principle it is already known that the mappings have a physical meaning. Ground-truthing then becomes a separate activity from the analysis. In concept the groundtruth is then only used to attach descriptors or labels to the acoustic mappings, and the groundtruth does not have to be invoked to prove the analysis. This sets the present method apart from previous techniques of echosounder based seabed classication, including those which attempt to model the echo envelope. In actuality the meaning of the mappings depends on the particular equipment set used, and ambiguity may occur, so that groundtruthing is a necessary part of the validation. Many clustering algorithms require too much processing power, computer memory, or processing time to be tenable for analysis of large data sets. Software programme CLARA overcomes these limitations by coupling statistical sampling and clustering techniques. The CLARA algorithm is intended to cluster a minimum of 100 objects. The algorithm rst clusters several sets of randomly chosen subsamples, then uses the particular subsampling returning best results (evaluated as previously described in the section The CLARA Statistical Clustering Algorithm) to cluster the entire data set. This provides a fast algorithm suitable for processing of large data sets, at the possible expense of accuracy. Sensitivity tests of the CLARA algorithm by the present author have shown the sampling scheme is robust, and that inaccuracy arising from the CLARA sampling methods is not an issue past some critical (and comparatively low) choice of number of objects in the subsamplings. The robustness of CLARA to relatively small subsample population size provides many advantages. Fast quicklook explorations of large data sets (e.g. 50,000 objects) can be made in a few minutes. This enables determination of the optimal number of clusters to be made relatively quickly, and is also useful for estimations of data quality.

4. Analysis 4.1. Groundtruth Groundtruth is available from surcial samples (some are visual descriptions only) (19802003), towed underwater video (July 1999), 455 kHz Klein 5500 sidescan sonar imagery (1999), and a 50 kHz RoxAnn acoustic seabed classication system (May June 1999). Dredging is not carried out in Sydney Harbour, so that the ve year time span of major data acquisition is not expected to present any difculty. Sidescan sonar backscatter imagery and RoxAnn echo parameters E1 and E2 all broadly separate the bay into two areas. E1 is an acoustic backscatter index related to surface roughness, and E2 is a measure of acoustic impedance, often referred to as acoustic hardness (Hamilton et al., 1999). Low backscatter is found east of a line running from 300 m west of Manns Point to Balls Head, with higher backscatter west of this line (Fig. 2). The RoxAnn data map the full extent of the high backscatter area, which video, grabs, and dredges show is

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Fig. 2. Groundtruth for Balls Head Bay. (a) Klein 5500 sidescan sonar imagery, underwater towed video transects (squares, &), and sampling locations (circles, JK). Filled symbols indicate the presence of shell, and unlled symbols and plus symbols ( ) the absence of shell. Larger unlled plus symbols in the centre of the gure ( ) denote sand without shell; (b) distribution of RoxAnn E1 values. Larger symbols denote higher values; (c) distribution of RoxAnn E2 values. Larger symbols denote higher values; and (d) broad contours of mud by wt% of sample (Udden-Wentworth grainsize scale). Unlled triangles (D) are sample positions with visual descriptions only. Grey-lled triangles denote mud weight 020%, grey-lled squares 2030%, circles (K) 3040%, pentagons 4050%, black lled triangles (m) 5060%, and black lled squares () 70100%.

caused by dead mussel and mud oyster shell. The change from presence to absence of shell in the video transect in the centre of the bay coincides closely with the change from high to low backscatter in the sidescan and RoxAnn mappings. The 50 kHz RoxAnn system functions as a very good shellbed nder, particularly through higher E2 values. The mud oyster shell is thick walled (13 cm), and up to 1015 cm in length, and 57 cm in width. In some areas the shell completely covers the surface. Away from headlands some extremely broad mud wt% contours and visual sediment descriptions show much of the area east of the Manns Point/Balls Head line to be soft mud, with mud% weight 70 98%. West of this line an east west trending sandy area (with

zero to 30% mud) is centred on the unlled cross symbol in the centre of Fig. 2a. Another sandy area lies immediately west of the trough projecting north from the deep scour hole off Balls Head. These two sandy areas are separated by muddy sediments. The groundtruth allows a basic sediment pattern to be constructed, but details are sketchy, with the sediment samples indicating patchiness from Manns Point to Balls Head in particular. The east-west division into soft mud sandy sediments appears to be a combination of geological and shipping factors. Oil tankers transit from west of Balls Head to berths in the channel north of Manns Point. Distribution of higher RoxAnn E2 values follows the shipping channel closely, in the study area and

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farther east, indicating that propeller action may scour away the softer sediments to expose relict shell and sands. Sediments are visibly entrained into the water column by ferries turning these vessels off Manns Point, possibly causing the scour hole in that location, and the rougher-harder area in the RoxAnn data.

4.2. The number of clusters CLARA was requested to form 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 24, 30 clusters. Each clustering takes a minute or so with the present data set, so that processing time is not a factor. The rationale in proceeding in this fashion is that the number of useful clusters is unknown before analysis. Also, the optimal number of clusters in some statistical sense may not be optimal in the geographic domain. This is particularly so

for quasi-continuums (or data clouds in feature spaces), but is not limited to that situation. It is a simple matter to visually scan the mappings formed with different numbers of clusters for spatial coherency, persistence of particular spatial congurations and so on to decide (a) whether or not a viable analysis is possible, (b) the number of useful clusters for a particular purpose, and (c) whether forming more clusters reveals particular spatial congurations of seabed properties not visible to smaller numbers of clusters. Results for the two, four and eight cluster cases are shown.

4.3. Cluster mappings and relation to groundtruth Mappings of cluster results are shown in Fig. 3. Medoids (central tendency of the clusters) are graphed in Fig. 4, and echo

Fig. 3. Mappings for 2, 4, and 8 classes by direct CLARA clustering of seabed echoes. (a) Two-clustering. Greyclass1, redclass 2; (b) four-clustering. Greyclass 1, yellowclass 2, blueclass 3, redclass 4; (c) eight-clustering. Class1open circles, class 2red, class 3yellow, class 4green, class 5lled triangles, class 6blue, class 7mauve, and class 8open triangles. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

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Fig. 4. Medoids (central tendency measures of echo clusters) for the mappings of Fig. 3.

Fig. 5. Overplots of echoes for two- and four-clusterings produced by direct CLARA clustering of seabed echoes. Notation: 4-3 is cluster 3 of the 4-clustering.

overplots in Figs. 5 and 6. The two-clustering provides a spatially coherent mapping which separates the deep scour hole off Balls Head from other locations (Fig. 3a). Echoes in the scour hole class have much longer backscatter tails than the other class, indicative of slopes, very rough sediments, or hard ground such as rock. Exposed rock forms the steeper northern side of the hole, and large thick-walled shells were found in the hole. A few isolated areas elsewhere in the bay with the same classication as the hole are associated principally with slopes. These areas appear in all of the clusterings. Because of the extremely high spatial correlation between the acoustic classes and geomorphic features in the survey area, the physical meaning of the acoustic classication is immediately obvious. The four-clustering also provides a spatially coherent mapping in which the northern bay area has different acoustic properties (class 2) from the southern bay (class 1) (Fig. 3b). This spatial division closely matches the groundtruth of Fig. 2, which similarly divides the bay into northern and southern areas of different seabed properties. Again there is no doubt as to the meaning of the acoustic classication, and it clearly provides a higher spatial resolution of seabed types than the two-clustering. High spatial correlation of the northmost class 2 with groundtruth identies it as soft mud with mud wt% over 70%. The southern bay class 1 is generally associated with mud wt% less than 70%. Class 2 also occurs in the south as the eastern outskirts of high mud concentration in Snails Bay. The Balls Head scour hole and slopes again appear as having much higher roughness properties than their surrounds (classes 3 and 4). The mapping appears useful as a broader acoustic segmentation of seabed acoustic properties, a view supported by the conguration of cluster medoids (Fig. 4) and overplots of all echoes in each class (Fig. 5). Overplots of all echoes in each class are regular in geometrical properties (shape,

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Fig. 6. Overplots of echoes for the eight-clustering.

central tendency, position of the echo peak). A deal of variation occurs within each class, but medoids differ from each other in shapes and locations. Cluster 1 and 2 medoids are similar, but their geographical distributions are spatially separate. Cluster 1 has a relatively longer backscatter tail than cluster 2. This would usually indicate cluster 1 is rougher than cluster 2, which is veried by its spatial correlation with the distributions of shell and higher RoxAnn E1 roughness values. In Figs. 4 and 5 the echo peak appears progressively later in the echo as backscatter tails lengthen. When not over slopes the time from echo start to echo peak is physically related to sediment roughness (e.g. Hamilton, 2001; Section 4.3), as is the duration of the echo. Properties of individual echoes within any one of the four classes of Fig. 5 vary about the central tendency of their cluster, with a range of times to echo peak, and in what might be described as jaggedness in the echoes. Clustering into a relatively few classes effectively acts as if the echoes in each cluster are rst smoothed or ltered, even though smoothing is not actually performed. The eight-clustering is mapped in Fig. 3c, with medoids in Fig. 4 and echo overplots in Fig. 6. In places the mapping appears fragmented compared to the four-clustering (Fig. 3b), and classes 2 and 4 have much the same distribution. This indicates the limits

of the clustering with respect to providing a useful spatial mapping may have been reached or exceeded, i.e. it appears that too many clusters have been formed. This is possibly indicated by the closeness of some of the medoids in properties, although this in itself is an insufcient indicator. Spatial distributions and groundtruth must be examined. The eight-clustering is used to demonstrate the benets of data exploration. Fig. 7 charts individual clusters in order of echo duration for their respective medoids, i.e. in general order of expected increasing roughness. Apart from class 6 the eight clusters generally have coherent spatial distributions, and all classes have rather clear relations to seabed properties. Clusters 3 and 6 dominantly occupy the eastern and western halves respectively of the shallow northern embayment. Class 3 is associated with mud weight over 70%, and class 6 is associated with mud weight less than 70%. This provides an enhanced resolution of seabed properties compared to the four-clustering. Classes 6 and 2 overlap in spatial distribution in the south and east of the bay, but elsewhere they are spatially separate, and supply more information than the 4-clustering. In the south and east they must be joined as a mixed class, a factor attributed to natural variability. Since the classes share the same depth range in this area, the spatial overlap cannot be an error of depth compensation. Classes 2 and 4 both have mud weight less than 70%. Class 4 lies interior to class 2, and is interspersed with class 2. The rst impression is that classes 2 and 4 should be amalgamated, reproducing class 1 of the fourclustering. However, their medoids (Fig. 4) appear sufciently separated for them to represent different classes, as turns out to be the case. The groundtruth indicate that class 4 coincides with shell concentrations lying on the surface of class 2, which make it rougher than class 2. Classes 1 and 5 are associated with slopes throughout the bay, and with the Balls Head scour hole, either through slope or increased surface roughness. Classes 7 and 8 occur almost wholly in the Balls Head scour hole. Geographically class 8 lies within class 7, with a spatial distribution separate from class 7. Class 8 occurs particularly on the north side of the hole, where it may be associated with both steeper slopes and an exposed rock surface. Class 8 has the same distribution as higher RoxAnn E1 values (Fig. 2b). E1 is a direct energy measure, whereas class 8 is based on the shape of a unit energy echo. These two different indications of seabed conditions effectively verify each other by their spatial coincidence. The new information from the eight-clustering provides an enhanced mapping compared to the four-clustering, even though eight clusters appears to have approached the useful limits of the clustering for purposes of geographical mapping. The energy normalised echo medoids and echo overplots grade relatively smoothly in shape properties as a function of the time from echo start to echo peak (Figs. 4 and 5). This condition is enhanced by the energy normalisation, which removes absolute amplitude information, but is a real feature of this data set. Discrete clusters completely separate in properties from all other clusters do not exist in this data set. In these circumstances class boundaries are largely articial constructs imposed on the data, and largely depend on the number of classes requested. Accordingly, as many or as few clusters may be formed as found necessary to identify sediment patterns and evolution of property trends. For the Balls Head Bay data, eight clusters is indicated to be an upper limit on the number of useful clusters, and the number of clusters would usually be chosen at this or some lesser number. However, as part of the exploration of the clustering methodology, geographical mappings for 12, 16, 24, and 30 clusters were examined. Results are not shown, not being directly useful to the analysis. Spatially coherent distributions occurred in some areas, but other areas had a polka-dotted appearance, indicating too

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Fig. 7. Spatial distribution of individual classes for the eight-clustering produced by direct CLARA clustering of seabed echoes.

many clusters were formed for those locations. Useful spatial information was obtained for these areas by amalgamating clusters having both adjacent medoids and overlapping spatial distributions. Forming classes in this manner is expected to be very useful for some data sets. This is because clusters with echo properties very similar to other clusters may sometimes have geographical locations or spatial congurations distinctly different from other clusters. This potentially useful information will not be found if it is not sought. A mapping of nine amalgamated classes formed from the 16-clustering was similar to the eightclustering. The soft mud class 3 of the eight-clustering was split into three geographically separate and spatially coherent distributions, but the groundtruth could not separate them.

5. Discussion 5.1. Some key echo characteristics Clustering is a postprocessing operation. Feature extraction may be viable for useful real-time operations, even if not as accurate as processing the echo in its entirety. According to a visual examination of the cluster medoids of Fig. 4, the energy normalised echoes can be regarded as being characterised principally by (1) the time from the echo start to the echo peak (rise time), (2) echo width (total width is usually, but not always, more sensitive to echo shape than half-width because of echo skewness), and (3) echo peak height. Although useful for classication,

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peak height is not directly representative of acoustic reectivity (or acoustic hardness), since the area under the amplitudesquared curve (uncalibrated energy) has been set to one unit in the analysis. The other two parameters are physical properties directly related to seabed roughness, and are independent of energy, providing a survey is not made over a depth range large enough for attenuation effects to signicantly change the signal to noise ratio of the echoes. Classifying on these three parameters, and/or derived parameters which accentuate these properties (e.g. moments, skewness, kurtosis) may be sufcient to provide a basic echo characterisation suitable for real-time classication. Successful seabed classication was obtained in postprocesssing by van Walree et al. (2005) with six features, and by Tegowski (2005) with three features. Feature selection is not further discussed in the present paper, but note that direct clustering of echoes provides a basis to nd optimal echo features with known physical relation to echo characteristics. Clusters or classes given by the features should align with those given by direct clustering. There can be no better validation. 5.2. Limitations of echosounder based seabed classication Echosounder based seabed classication is not an exact process. Corrections to echo shapes and energies necessary to account for wavefront curvature and sampling at equal intervals of time, rather than at equal angles, are not exact (see Preston, 2006). It is difcult to impossible to account for seabed slope effects (Biffard et al. (2002)), a factor compounded by variable bathymetry. Ambiguity in acoustic responses from some seabed types may result (Hamilton et al., 1999). When well dened differences between physical properties of seabed classes do not exist, the spatial boundaries between acoustic classes can be entirely articial. The acoustic classes are then indicators of general property trends, and are not necessarily absolute in some sense. Seabed classication is used as a proxy for habitat classication, but it follows from the previous remark that direct relations between habitat and seabed acoustic classes might not exist. In such circumstances supervised classication may be more useful for habitat classication than the unsupervised classication of the present analysis. Echosounder seabed classication is highly useful, but users must be aware of the limitations of the technique.

The success of the direct clustering method for processing of echoes for Balls Head Bay can be interpreted as meaning that the rst order information inherent in the echoes was sufcient in itself for classication. Echo information did not have to be accentuated through calculation of nonlinear characteristics such as higher order moments, or spectral properties. This is despite the narrow 101 beamwidth used. Multibeam sonar seabed angular backscatter response curves suggest beamwidths over 301 may be optimal for echosounder seabed classication in shallow water (Hamilton and Parnum, 2011). Nevertheless, features calculated from higher order statistics may be helpful in discriminating between some types of seabeds. For example, Tegowski (2005) used a measure of fractal dimension to capture the jaggedness or complexity in echoes. The direct clustering indicates simple geometrical echo features which may be capable of differentiating echo shapes and hence seabed types. This information may be useful for real-time acoustic seabed segmentation. The simple approach to seabed classication enabled through direct clustering of echoes places the focus of attention on the primary data (the actual echoes), where it should always be. Emphasis on mathematical and statistical echo parameters and techniques is replaced by a more informed and physically based approach to data exploration. Simple displays of classied echoes allow a visually informed and direct evaluation of results, innitely more meaningful than visualisation of principal components in a mathematical pseudo 3-space. Many reports on acoustic seabed classication do not present so much as a single echo, and some acoustic seabed classication systems do not store or display echoes. This is not conducive to obtaining reliable and veriable results. Useful though they undeniably are, dimensional reduction techniques provide only indirect or secondhand analyses of data. Coupling the concept of direct clustering of single-valued curves (Hamilton, 2007, 2009) with statistical sampling and clustering techniques such as those used by the CLARA algorithm of Kaufman and Rousseeuw (1990) means that the so-called curse of dimensionality (Bellman 1961) no longer exists for many applications. Dimensional reduction approaches have dominated thinking on large data sets in several areas of the geosciences for several decades, but for many data sets able to be expressed as single-valued curves they may not be necessary.

References 6. Conclusions After preprocessing, direct statistical clustering of actual echoes from Balls Head Bay, Sydney Harbour was sufcient to achieve segmentation of the seabed into areas with similar acoustic responses to echosounder pings. Feature extraction and dimensional reduction techniques were not necessary. This was veried by sidescan sonar, a RoxAnn system, underwater video, and seabed samples. To be most useful, mappings obtained from direct clustering of actual echoes are in need of labelling with inferred seabed characteristics. Note however, that in themselves they do not need verication. Because actual echoes are classied directly and in their entirety by the direct clustering technique, there is no doubt that geographical class mappings do represent different acoustic seabed responses. In contrast feature extraction and dimensional reduction methods of classication need both verication and labelling, as does modelling, because they process echo characteristics indirectly, sometimes in mathematical spaces with unknown relation to echo properties. The mappings produced from direct clustering of echoes are not absolute in a physical sense because they depend on echosounder characteristics. However, they can still be used as a standalone acoustic segmentation.
Bellman, R., 1961. Adaptive Control Processes: A Guided Tour. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Biffard, B., Bloomer, S., Chapman, R., 2005. Single beam seabed classication: direct methods of classication and the problem of slope. In: Pace, N.G., Blondel, P. (Eds.), Boundary Inuences in High Frequency, Shallow Water Acoustics, University of Bath Press, Bath, pp. 227232. Canepa, G., Bergem, O., Pouliquen, E., 1997. The implementation of BORIS-3D: BOttom Response from Inhomogeneities and Surface, Version 1.0. SACLANTCEN Special Report, M-125. SACLANT Undersea Research Centre, La Spezia, Italy. Caughey, D.A., Kirlin, R.L., 1996. Blind deconvolution of echosounder envelopes. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing ICASSP 6, 31493152. Clarke, T.L., Proni, J.R., Seem, D.A., Tsai, J.J., 1988. Joint CGS-AOML (Charting and Geodetic Service Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory) Acoustical Bottom Echo-Formation Research I: Literature Search and Initial Modelling Results. NOAA Technical Memorandum ERL AOML-66. Durand, S., Le Bel, M., Juniper, K., Legendre, P., 2002. The use of video surveys, a geographic information system and sonar backscatter data to study faunal community dynamics at Juan de Fuca Ridge hydrothermal vents. Cahiers Biologie Marine 43, 235240. Furuno Electric Co. Ltd. Furuno Operators Manual Echo Sounder FE-4300. No. OME2315-0B. Nishinomiya, Japan, 40 pp. Hamilton, L.J., 2001. Acoustic seabed classication systems. DSTO Technical Note DSTO-TN-0401, 66 pp. /http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/corporate/reports/ DSTO-TN-0401.pdfS. Hamilton, L.J., 2005. A bibliography of acoustic seabed classication. Cooperative Research Centre for Coastal Zone, Estuary, and Waterway Management

L.J. Hamilton / Continental Shelf Research 31 (2011) 20002011 Technical Report No. 27./http://www.coastal.crc.org.au/pdf/TechnicalRe ports/27-Hamilton_Acoustic_Biblio.pdfS. Hamilton, L.J., 2006. Comments On Orpin, A.R., Kostylev, V.E. (2006). Towards a statistically valid method of textural sea oor characterization of benthic habitats. Marine Geology 225(14), 209222. Marine Geology 232 (1 2), 105110. Hamilton, L.J., 2007. Clustering of cumulative grain size distribution curves for shallow-marine samples with software program CLARA. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences 54, 503519. Hamilton, L.J., 2009. Characterising spectral sea wave conditions with statistical clustering of actual spectra. Applied Ocean Research. doi:10.1016/ j.apor.2009.12.003. Hamilton, L.J., Mulhearn, P.J., Poeckert, R., 1999. A comparison of RoxAnn and QTCView acoustic bottom classication system performance for the Cairns area, Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Continental Shelf Research 19 (12), 15771597. Hamilton, L.J., Parnum, I., 2011. Seabed segmentation from unsupervised statistical clustering of entire multibeam sonar backscatter curves. Continental Shelf Research 31 (2), 138148. Kaufman, L., Rousseeuw, P.J., 1990. Finding Groups in Data: An Introduction to Cluster Analysis. John Wiley, New York. Lurton, X., Pouliquen, E., 1992. Automated seabed classication system for echo sounders. In: Proceedings OCEANS92. Mastering The Oceans Through Technology, vol. 1, pp. 317321. Mayer, L., 2000. Normal incidence classication methods. Lecture 19. Fourth AsiaPacic Coastal Multibeam Sonar Training Course, Cairns, Australia, 1419 August 2000.

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Penrose, J.D., Siwabessy, P.J.W., Gavrilov, A., Parnum, I., Hamilton, L.J., Brooke, B., Ryan, D.A., Kennedy, P., 2005. Acoustic Techniques For Seabed Classication. CRC Technical Report No. 32. 130 pp. /http://www.coastal.crc.org.au/Assets/ 03CaseStudies/03_10References/Papers/Sonar/CRCliteraturereview_v21.pdfS. Preston, J.M., 2003. Resampling sonar echo time series primarily for seabed classication. U.S. Patent Application Serial Number 449914. Preston, J.M., 2006. Acoustic Classication of Seaweed and Sediment with DepthCompensated Vertical Echoes. Oceans 2006, Boston, USA, 1820 September 2006. Preston, J.M., 2009. Automated acoustic seabed classication of multibeam images of Stanton Banks. Applied Acoustics 70 (10), 12771287. Preston, J.M., Christney, A.C., Beran, L.S., Collins, W.T., 2004. Statistical seabed segmentationfrom images and echoes to objective clustering. In: Proceedings of the 7th European Conference On Underwater Acoustics, Delft, The Netherlands, pp. 813816. Quester Tangent, 2002. QTC IMPACTTM acoustic seabed classication, user guide version 3.00. Integrated Mapping, Processing and Classication Toolkit. Quester Tangent, Sidney, B.C., Canada. Sternlicht, D.D., de Moustier, C.P., 2003. Remote sensing of sediment characteristics by optimized echo-envelope matching. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 114 (5), 27272743. Tegowski, J., 2005. Acoustical classication of the bottom sediments in the southern Baltic Sea. Quaternary International 130, 153161. van Walree, P.A., Te gowski, J., Laban, C., Simons, D.G., 2005. Acoustic seaoor discrimination with echo shape parameters: a comparison with the ground truth. Continental Shelf Research 25, 22732293.