Hierarchical Conditional Random Fields Model for Semisupervised SAR Image Segmentation

• Published in: IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing Vol. 53; no. 9; pp. 4933 - 4951
• Main Authors: Zhang, Peng, Li, Ming, Wu, Yan, Li, Hejing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.09.2015; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Analytical models; Computational modeling; Context modeling; Data models; Hierarchical conditional random field (HIECRF) model; hierarchical inference; Image processing systems; Image segmentation; multiresolution analysis; Scattering; semisupervised synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image segmentation; Synthetic aperture radar; Hierarchical conditional random field (HIECRF) model; hierarchical inference; multiresolution analysis; semisupervised synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image segmentation
• ISSN: 0196-2892; 1558-0644
• DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2015.2413905

The conditional random field (CRF) model is suitable for the image segmentation because this model relaxes the assumption of conditional independence of the observed data and models the data-dependent label interaction in the image modeling. However, this model has a limited ability to capture the global and local image information from the perspective of multiresolution analysis. Moreover, for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image segmentation, SAR scattering statistics that are essential to SAR image processing are not considered in the CRF model. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical CRF (HIECRF) model for SAR image segmentation. The HIECRF model belongs to the discriminative models according to the semantic structure. While inheriting the advantages of the CRF model, the HIECRF model achieves the integration of the image features and SAR scattering statistics and captures the contextual structure information in the spatial and scale spaces. Moreover, we derive a hierarchical inference algorithm for the HIECRF model in virtue of the mean-field approximation (MFA) to provide the maximization of the posterior marginal (MPM) estimate of the HIECRF model. Then, by the bottom-up and the top-down recursions in the hierarchical inference procedure, the HIECRF model effectively exploits the global and local image information, including the contextual structures, the image features, and the scattering statistics, to achieve the MPM segmentation. The effectiveness of the HIECRF model is demonstrated by the application to the semisupervised segmentation of the simulated images and the real SAR images.