Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration ISSN:1229-1064(Print) 2384-051X(Online) 지구물리와 물리탐사

Machine learning (ML)-based cavity detection using a large amount of survey data obtained from vehicle-mounted ground penetrating radar (GPR) has been actively studied to identify underground cavities. However, only simple image processing techniques have been used for preprocessing the ML input, and many conventional seismic and GPR data processing techniques, which have been used for decades, have not been fully exploited. In this study, based on the idea that a cavity can be identified using diffraction, we applied ML-based diffraction separation to GPR data to increase the accuracy of cavity detection using the YOLO v5 model. The original ML-based seismic diffraction separation technique was modified, and the separated diffraction image was used as the input to train the cavity detection model. The performance of the proposed method was verified using public GPR data released by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. Underground cavities and objects were more accurately detected using separated diffraction images. In the future, the proposed method can be useful in various fields in which GPR surveys are used.