Classification of objects in images with distortions based on a two-stage topological analysis

The authors propose a method for automatic classification of spatial objects in images under conditions of a limited data set. The stability of the method to distortions appearing in images due to natural phenomena and partial overlap of urban infrastructure objects is investigated. High classification accuracy, when using existing approaches, requires a large training sample, including data sets with distortions, which significantly increases computational complexity. The paper proposes a method for a two-step topological analysis of images. Topological features are initially extracted by analyzing the image in the brightness range from 0 to 255, and then from 255 to 0. These features complement each other and reflect the topological structure of the object. Under certain deformations and distortions, the object preserves its structure in the form of extracted features. The advantage of the method is a small number of patterns, which reduces the computational complexity of training compared to neural networks. The proposed method is investigated and compared with the modern neural network approach. The study was performed on a DOTA dataset (Dataset for Object deTection in Aerial images) containing images of spatial objects of several classes. In the absence of distortion in the image, the neural network approach showed a classification accuracy of over 98 %, while the proposed method achieved about 82 %. Further distortions such as 90 degree rotation, 50 % narrowing and 50 % edge truncation and their combinations were applied in the experiment. The proposed method showed its robustness and outperformed the neural network approach. In the most difficult combination of the test, the decrease in classification accuracy of the neural network was 46 %, while the described method showed 12 %. The proposed method can be applied in cases with a high probability of distortion in the images. Such distortions arise in the field of geoinformatics when analyzing objects of various scales, under different weather conditions, partial overlap of one object with another, in the presence of shadows, etc. It is possible to use the proposed method in vision systems of industrial enterprises for automatic classification of the parts that belong to superimposed objects.