Ship detection and classification from optical remote sensing images: A survey

Considering the important applications in the military and the civilian domain, ship detection and classification based on optical remote sensing images raise considerable attention in the sea surface remote sensing filed. This article collects the methods of ship detection and classification for practically testing in optical remote sensing images, and provides their corresponding feature extraction strategies and statistical data. Basic feature extraction strategies and algorithms are analyzed associated with their performance and application in ship detection and classification. Furthermore, publicly available datasets that can be applied as the benchmarks to verify the effectiveness and the objectiveness of ship detection and classification methods are summarized in this paper. Based on the analysis, the remaining problems and future development trends are provided for ship detection and classification methods based on optical remote sensing images.