A novel approach to sonar images focussing evaluation

In scientific literature many parameters of an image sharpness can be defined, that can be used for the evaluation of display energy concentration (EC). This paper proposes a new, simple approach to EC quantitative evaluation in spectrograms, which are used for the analysis and visualization of sonar signals. The presented approach of the global-image EC measure was developed to the evaluation of EC in arbitrary direction (or at an arbitrary angle) and along an arbitrary path that is contained within the displayed area. The proposed measures were used to establish optimum spectrograph parameters, subject to high EC in images, in particular the type and width of the window. Moreover, the paper defines the marginal EC distributions that can be used in sonar signal detection as a support to the main detector.