An Algorithm to Estimate the Thickness of Broken Arctic Ice Using an Image

The thickness of ice is the major factor affecting the rapid and safe cruise of icebreaking vessels. Unfortunately, measuring the ice thickness has been known to be a difficult task. An approach to measure the ice thickness by analyzing the video clips of ice breaking is introduced. From a series of still shots, the broken section of the ice is identified using image processing techniques such as conversion of color space, edge detection, boundary motion, and various digital smoothing filters. The algorithm developed is verified by comparing the results with measured data.