Physics-informed simulation framework for realistic sonar image generation and statistical validation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: S, Kamal Basha, Nambiar, Athira
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author S, Kamal Basha
Nambiar, Athira
author_facet S, Kamal Basha
Nambiar, Athira
contents Synthetic sonar datasets offer a scalable alternative to costly real-world acquisition, yet their utility remains limited by the absence of rigorous quantitative validation. We present ACOUSIM (ACOustic SIMulation and Validation Platform), a physics-informed framework that evaluates the statistical alignment between synthetic and real sonar imagery without relying on generative models. A Gazebo-based environment generates sonar-like images by explicitly controlling seabed texture, illumination-driven shadowing, platform altitude, and noise. Realism is quantified against two public sonar datasets, SeabedObjects-KLSG-II and Sonar Common Target Detection (SCTD), using global intensity and local texture (LBP) distributions assessed via Kullback-Leibler divergence, Jensen-Shannon divergence, and Earth Mover's Distance. Results show strong texture alignment (KL < 0.07) across all classes, with plane-class intensity alignment outperforming ship-class due to shadow geometry complexity. ACOUSIM establishes a reproducible, distribution-level baseline for sim-to-real sonar evaluation and directly supports reliable dataset validation for underwater image analysis.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_19712
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Physics-informed simulation framework for realistic sonar image generation and statistical validation
S, Kamal Basha
Nambiar, Athira
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Synthetic sonar datasets offer a scalable alternative to costly real-world acquisition, yet their utility remains limited by the absence of rigorous quantitative validation. We present ACOUSIM (ACOustic SIMulation and Validation Platform), a physics-informed framework that evaluates the statistical alignment between synthetic and real sonar imagery without relying on generative models. A Gazebo-based environment generates sonar-like images by explicitly controlling seabed texture, illumination-driven shadowing, platform altitude, and noise. Realism is quantified against two public sonar datasets, SeabedObjects-KLSG-II and Sonar Common Target Detection (SCTD), using global intensity and local texture (LBP) distributions assessed via Kullback-Leibler divergence, Jensen-Shannon divergence, and Earth Mover's Distance. Results show strong texture alignment (KL < 0.07) across all classes, with plane-class intensity alignment outperforming ship-class due to shadow geometry complexity. ACOUSIM establishes a reproducible, distribution-level baseline for sim-to-real sonar evaluation and directly supports reliable dataset validation for underwater image analysis.
title Physics-informed simulation framework for realistic sonar image generation and statistical validation
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.19712