Uncertainty-Incorporated Ice and Open Water Detection on Dual-Polarized SAR Sea Ice Imagery
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Algorithms designed for ice–water classification of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sea ice imagery produce only binary (ice and water) output typically using manually labeled samples for assessment. This is limiting because only a small subset of labeled samples are used, which, given the nonstationary nature of the ice and water classes, will likely not reflect the full scene. To address this, we implement a binary ice–water classification in a more informative manner considering the uncertainty associated with each pixel in the scene. To accomplish this, we have implemented a Bayesian convolutional neural network (CNN) with variational inference to produce both aleatoric (data-based) and epistemic (model-based) uncertainty. This valuable information provides feedback as to regions that have pixels more likely to be misclassified and provides improved scene interpretation. Testing was performed on a set of 21 RADARSAT-2 dual-polarization SAR scenes covering a region in the Beaufort Sea captured regularly from April to December. The model is validated by demonstrating: 1) a positive correlation between misclassification rate and model uncertainty and 2) a higher uncertainty during the melt and freeze-up transition periods, which are more challenging to classify. By incorporating the iterative region growing with semantics (IRGS) segmentation algorithm and an uncertainty value-based thresholding algorithm, the Bayesian CNN classification outputs are improved significantly via both numerical analysis and visual inspection.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".