Deep learning algorithms for detecting explosive hazards in ground penetrating radar data

Buried explosive hazards (BEHs) have been, and continue to be, one of the most deadly threats in modern conflicts. Current handheld sensors rely on a highly trained operator for them to be effective in detecting BEHs. New algorithms are needed to reduce the burden on the operator and improve the performance of handheld BEH detectors. Traditional anomaly detection and discrimination algorithms use “hand-engineered” feature extraction techniques to characterize and classify threats. In this work we use a Deep Belief Network (DBN) to transcend the traditional approaches of BEH detection (e.g., principal component analysis and real-time novelty detection techniques). DBNs are pretrained using an unsupervised learning algorithm to generate compressed representations of unlabeled input data and form feature detectors. They are then fine-tuned using a supervised learning algorithm to form a predictive model. Using ground penetrating radar (GPR) data collected by a robotic cart swinging a handheld detector, our research demonstrates that relatively small DBNs can learn to model GPR background signals and detect BEHs with an acceptable false alarm rate (FAR). In this work, our DBNs achieved 91% probability of detection (Pd) with 1.4 false alarms per square meter when evaluated on anti-tank and anti-personnel targets at temperate and arid test sites. This research demonstrates that DBNs are a viable approach to detect and classify BEHs.