Edge Detection for PolSAR Images Integrating Scattering Characteristics and Optimal Contrast

• Published in: IEEE geoscience and remote sensing letters Vol. 17; no. 2; pp. 257 - 261
• Main Authors: Quan, Sinong, Xiang, Deliang, Xiong, Boli, Kuang, Gangyao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.02.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Detectors; Edge detection; Edge detector; Image contrast; Image detection; Image edge detection; Microsoft Windows; optimal contrast (OC); polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR); Radar imaging; Radar polarimetry; SAR (radar); Scattering; scattering characteristics; Solid modeling; Statistical distributions; Synthetic aperture radar; Urban areas
• ISSN: 1545-598X; 1558-0571
• DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2019.2919422

Subject to the statistical distribution assumption and the fixed window shape, the classical edge detectors for polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images generally generate inaccurate results in heterogeneous scenes. In this letter, a PolSAR image edge detector integrating the scattering characteristics and optimal contrast (OC) is proposed. Hierarchical model-based decomposition is first implemented for the scattering mechanism characterization. On this basis, a scattering mechanism-driven adaptive window is then designed, which contains pixels with uniform polarimetric scattering. Finally, to avoid making the assumption, the OC measurement is adopted for the edge strength calculation. Experimental results conducted on different PolSAR data confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method and its superiority over the classical edge detectors, especially in heterogeneous areas.