Identification of unexploded ordnance from clutter using neural networks

The largest costs associated with subsurface Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) remediation are associated with removing non-UXO debris. Discrimination between UXO and non-UXO is important for both cost and safety reasons. A neural network was developed to distinguish between UXO and non-UXO clutter using Time Domain Electromagnetic Method (TEM) data. There are two stages for the learning process of neural network: training and testing. A synthetic dataset was created using actual acquisition configurations, with varying amounts of random noise. This dataset included 934 UXO targets representing 7 different UXO types, and 789 clutter objects based on four templates with varying size and random asymmetry. The results show 97% accuracy for correctly classifying clutter, and 97% accuracy for correctly classifying UXO.