Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

A reproducible and reusable pipeline for segmentation of geoscientific imagery

September 9, 2022

Segmentation of Earth science imagery is an increasingly common task. Among modern techniques that use Deep Learning, the UNet architecture has been shown to be a reliable for segmenting a range of imagery. We developed software–Segmentation Gym–to implement a data-model pipeline for segmentation of scientific imagery using a family of UNet models. With an existing set of imagery and labels, the software uses a single configuration file that handles data set creation, as well as model setup and model training. Key benefits of this software are (a) the focus on reproducible data set creation and modeling, and (b) the ability for quick model experimentation through changes to a configuration file. Quick experimentation permits researchers to prototype different model architectures, sizes, and adjust common hyperparameters to find a suitable model. We demonstrate the use of the software using a data set of 419 labeled Landsat-8 scenes of coastal environments and compare results across two model architectures, five model sizes, and three loss functions. This demonstration highlights that our software enables rapid, reproducible experimentation to determine optimal hyperparameters for specific data sets and research questions.

Publication Year 2022
Title A reproducible and reusable pipeline for segmentation of geoscientific imagery
DOI 10.1029/2022EA002332
Authors Daniel Buscombe, Evan B. Goldstein
Publication Type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Series Title Earth and Space Science
Index ID 70237821
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center