Processing backscatter data involves applying various and complex environmental and sensor-specific corrections to the raw level recorded by the system.
HYPACK EXPORT MULTIBEAM TO XYZ SOFTWARE
Due to their commercial nature, these software packages are often closed source, and very limited information is available about their proprietary data processing routines and algorithms. Most of these end-users rely on commercial software for data processing. Today, backscatter is collected by a broad range of users for a variety of applications, including scientists and resource managers to assess and quantify seafloor resources (sediment, geology, habitats, etc.), by hydrographic and military agencies to determine seafloor type, and by coastal zone managers for infrastructure planning. As backscatter started proving important in seafloor characterization studies, the user base expanded, and several commercial, proprietary software packages became available. The earliest software packages were developed and privately used by academics. This study explores the possible reasons for these differences and highlights the need for collaborative efforts between software developers and their users to improve the consistency and transparency of the backscatter data processing sequence.Ĭommercial Multibeam echosounders (MBES) were designed in the 1970’s for the purpose of bathymetry data acquisition, but it is only in the past two decades that software packages generally became available to process seafloor backscatter data (henceforth, backscatter). Both of these intermediate results showed large differences between software solutions. The first phase of the study requested intermediate processed results consisting of two stages of the processing sequence: the one-value-per-beam level obtained after reading the raw data and the level obtained after radiometric corrections but before compensation of the angular dependence. To this end, willing commercial and academic software developers were invited to generate intermediate processed backscatter results from a common dataset, for cross-comparison.
To recognize the source(s) of inconsistency between software, it is necessary to understand at which stage(s) of the data processing chain the differences become substantial. Without transparency of the processing pipeline and the lack of consistency between software packages raises concerns about the validity of the final results. However, large differences (>5 dB) can often be observed between the mosaics produced by different software packages processing the same dataset.
HYPACK EXPORT MULTIBEAM TO XYZ UPGRADE
This release is an upgrade to the HYPACK®2014 release. HYPACK, Inc., a hydrographic surveying software company, released its new REAL TIME POINT CLOUD.