Three-dimensional convolutional neural network–based underground object classification using three-dimensional ground penetrating radar data

Ground-penetrating radar is a typical sensor system for analyzing underground facilities such as pipelines and rebars. The technique also can be used to detect an underground cavity, which is a potential sign of urban sinkholes. Multichannel ground-penetrating radar devices are widely used to detect underground cavities thanks to the capacity of informative three-dimensional data. Nevertheless, the three-dimensional ground-penetrating radar data interpretation is unclear and complicated when recognizing underground cavities because similar ground-penetrating radar data reflected from different underground objects are often mixed with the cavities. As it is prevalently known that the deep learning algorithm-based techniques are powerful at image classification, deep learning-based techniques for underground object detection techniques using two-dimensional GPR (ground-penetrating radar) radargrams have been researched upon in recent years. However, spatial information of underground objects can be characterized better in three-dimensional ground-penetrating radar voxel data than in two-dimensional ground-penetrating radar images. Therefore, in this study, a novel underground object classification technique is proposed by applying deep three-dimensional convolutional neural network on three-dimensional ground-penetrating radar data. First, a deep convolutional neural network architecture was developed using three-dimensional convolutional networks for recognizing spatial underground objects such as, pipe, cavity, manhole, and subsoil. The framework of applying the three-dimensional convolutional neural network into three-dimensional ground-penetrating radar data was then proposed and experimentally validated using real three-dimensional ground-penetrating radar data. In order to do that, three-dimensional ground-penetrating radar block data were used to train the developed three-dimensional convolutional neural network and to classify unclassified three-dimensional ground-penetrating radar data collected from urban roads in Seoul, South Korea. The validation results revealed that four underground objects (pipe, cavity, manhole, and subsoil) are successfully classified, and the average classification accuracy was 97%. In addition, a false alarm was rarely indicated.