An APMLP Deep Learning Model for Bathymetry Retrieval Using Adjacent Pixels

Shallowwater depth plays an important role in marine development, navigation safety, and environmental protection. It is an efficient and economical way to obtain water depth by remote sensing technology. At present, most empirical models based on multispectral image usually obtain water depth by the relationship between the sea surface reflectance (SSR) (a single pixel) and
in situ
water depth, it is a one-to-one correspondence between the reflectance and depth. However, seafloor substrate and inherent optical properties (IOP) will also have contribution to the SSR. In this article, we propose an adjacent pixels multilayer perceptron model (APMLP) model using adjacent pixels to weaken the influence of seafloor substrate and IOP.Datasets on Oahu Island (Sentinel-2B, LIDAR
in situ
data) and Saint Thomas Island (Sentinel-2A, LIDAR
in situ
data) are used to establish and verify the model. The APMLP model are also compared with the multilayer perceptron model (MLP) model, BP neural network model, and Log-ratio model. The overall root-mean-square error (RMSE) of APMLP model on Oahu Island is 0.72 m, which is much better than the other three models (MLP 1.07 m, BP 1.05 m, Log-ratio 1.52 m). Similar results are obtained from the Saint Thomas Island dataset, RMSE of APMLP model is 1.56 m, better than the other three (MLP 1.91 m, BP 1.89 m, Log-ratio 2.39 m). The study confirms that considering adjacent pixels in an artificial neural network model can effectively improve the performance of water depth retrieval.