PAN-DeSpeck:A Lightweight Pyramid and Attention-Based Network for SAR Image Despeckling

SAR images commonly suffer fromspeckle noise,posing a significant challenge in their analysis and interpretation.Existing convolutional neural network(CNN)based despeckling methods have shown great performance in removing speckle noise.However,these CNN-basedmethods have a fewlimitations.They do not decouple complex background information in amulti-resolutionmanner.Moreover,they have deep network structures thatmay result in many parameters,limiting their applicability tomobile devices.Furthermore,extracting key speckle information in the presence of complex background is also a major problem with SAR.The proposed study addresses these limitations by introducing a lightweight pyramid and attention-based despeckling(PAN-Despeck)network.The primary objective is to enhance image quality and enable improved information interpretation,particularly on mobile devices and scenarios involving complex backgrounds.The PAN-Despeck network leverages domainspecific knowledge and integrates Gaussian Laplacian image pyramid decomposition for multi-resolution image analysis.By utilizing this approach,complex background information can be effectively decoupled,leading to enhanced despeckling performance.Furthermore,the attention mechanism selectively focuses on key speckle features and facilitates complex background removal.The network incorporates recursive and residual blocks to ensure computational efficiency and accelerate training speed,making it lightweight while maintaining high performance.Through comprehensive evaluations,it is demonstrated that PAN-Despeck outperforms existing image restoration methods.With an impressive average peak signal-to-noise ratio(PSNR)of 28.355114 and a remarkable structural similarity index(SSIM)of 0.905467,it demonstrates exceptional performance in effectively reducing speckle noise in SAR images.The source code for the PAN-DeSpeck network is available on GitHub.

Fast segmentation approach for SAR image based on simple Markov random field

Traditional image segmentation methods based on MRF converge slowly and require pre-defined weight. These disadvantages are addressed, and a fast segmentation approach based on simple Markov random field （MRF） for SAR image is proposed. The approach is firstly used to perform coarse segmentation in blocks. Then the image is modeled with simple MRF and adaptive variable weighting forms are applied in homogeneous and heterogeneous regions. As a result, the convergent speed is accelerated while the segmentation results in homogeneous regions and boarders are improved. Simulations with synthetic and real SAR images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Underwater topography detection of Shuangzi Reefs with SAR images acquired in different time

Imaging mechanism of underwater topography by SAR and a underwater topography SAR detection model built on the theory of underwater topography detection with SAR image presented by Yuan Yeli are used to detect the underwater topography of Shuangzi Reefs in the Nansha Islands with three scenes of SAR images acquired in different time. Detection results of three SAR images are compared with the chart topography and the detection errors are analyzed. Underwater topography detection experiments of Shuangzi Reefs show that the detection model is practicable. The detection results indicate that SAR images acquired in different time also can be used to detect the underwater topography, and the detection results are affected by the ocean conditions in the SAR acquiring time.

A detection model of underwater topography with a series of SAR images acquired at different time

underwater topography is one of oceanic features detected by Synthetic Aperture Radar.Underwater topography SAR imaging mechanism shows that tidal current is the important factor for underwater topography SAR imaging.Thus under the same wind field condition,SAR images for the same area acquired at different time include different information of the underwater topography.To utilize synchronously SAR images acquired at different time for the underwater topography SAR detection and improve the precision of detection,based on the detection model of underwater topography with single SAR image and the periodicity of tidal current,a detection model of underwater topography with a series of SAR images acquired at different time is developed by combing with tide and tidal current numerical simulation.To testify the feasibility of the presented model,Taiwan Shoal located at the south outlet of Taiwan Strait is selected as study area and three SAR images are used in the underwater topography detection.The detection results are compared with the field observation data of water depth carried out by R/V Dongfanghong 2,and the errors of the detection are compared with those of the single SAR image.All comparisons show that the detection model presented in the paper improves the precision of underwater topography SAR detection,and the presented model is feasible.

Nearshore Wave Field Analysis Using SAR Images

Satellite remote sensing technique offers a wide range of information, and is one of the tools for ocean wave observation. This paper discusses the limitations of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images in wave field analysis. It is found that the wave field analysis is affected by the gray value distribution of image and the relationship between satellite travel and wave propagation directions. Since human activities and coastal engineering are performed in nearshore areas, some issues are discussed for nearshore SAR image analysis. Several case studies show that the wave parameters estimated from nearshore SAR images are quite different from in situ measurements, suggesting that the wave information derived from nearshore SAR images cannot appropriately represent the wave characteristics. One of the reasons is that the wave field is non homogeneous in the nearshore area.

Object Detection Research of SAR Image Using Improved Faster Region-Based Convolutional Neural Network

Target detection technology of synthetic aperture radar(SAR)imageis widely used in the field of military reconnaissance and surveillance.The traditional SAR image target detection methods need to be provided a lot of empirical knowledge because the characteristics of SAR images in different configurations(attitude,pitch angle,imaging parameters,etc.)will change greatly,resulting in high generalization error.Currently,deep learning method has achieved great success in the field of image processing.Research shows that deep learning can achieve a more intrinsic description of the data,while the model has a stronger ability of modeling and generalization.In order to solve the problem of insufficient data in SAR data sets,an experimental system for acquiring SAR image data in real scenes was built.Then the transfer learning method and the improved convolution neural network algorithm(PCA+Faster R-CNN)are applied to improve the target detection precision.Finally,experimental results demonstrate the significant effectiveness of the proposed method.

Bayesian-Based Speckle Suppression for SAR Image Using Contourlet Transform

A novel and efficient speckle noise reduction algorithm based on Bayesian contourlet shrinkage using contourlet transform is proposed.First,we show the sub-band decompositions of SAR images using contourle transforms,which provides sparse representation at both spatial and directional resolutions.Then,a Bayesian contourlet shrinkage factor is applied to the decomposed data to estimate the best value for noise-free contourle coefficients.Experimental results show that compared with conventional wavelet despeckling algorithm,the proposed algorithm can achieve an excellent balance between suppresses speckle effectively and preserve image details,and the significant information of origina image like textures and contour details is well ma intained.

A Novel SAR Image Ship Small Targets Detection Method

To satisfy practical requirements of high real-time accuracy and low computational complexity of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image ship small target detection, this paper proposes a small ship target detection method based on the improved You Only Look Once Version 3 (YOLOv3). The main contributions of this study are threefold. First, the feature extraction network of the original YOLOV3 algorithm is replaced with the VGG16 network convolution layer. Second, general convolution is transformed into depthwise separable convolution, thereby reducing the computational cost of the algorithm. Third, a residual network structure is introduced into the feature extraction network to reuse the shallow target feature information, which enhances the detailed features of the target and ensures the improvement in accuracy of small target detection performance. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, many experiments are conducted on public SAR image datasets. For ship targets with complex backgrounds and small ship targets in the SAR image, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified. Results show that the accuracy and recall rate improved by 5.31% and 2.77%, respectively, compared with the original YOLOV3. Furthermore, the proposed model not only significantly reduces the computational effort, but also improves the detection accuracy of ship small target.

De-Speckling of SAR Images with Fuzzy Filters along with Altered Preserved Edge Values

In this research, the denoising of speckled SAR image has been done with fuzzy filters (ATMED, TMED, ATMAV & TMAV). SAR image or Synthetic Aperture Radar image consists of the informatics of ISW (Internal solitary waves). A new technique has been proposed which preserved the edge pixels by fuzzy edge detection method and then altered with the filtered image-pixels by fuzzy filtration for getting the denoised image. The comparative result shows that the proposed filter performs better than the other filtered results in terms of PSNR (41.61 dB), MAE (1.47), MSE (4.54) for TMAVxAPE & SSIM (81%) for ATMEDwAPE. The proposed method in this research shows better SSI (Spackle Suppression Index) value. Therefore the experimental result illustrates that the suggested fuzzy filter is much more capable of simultaneously protecting edges and suppressing speckle noise. This research will be beneficial to remove spackle noise from SAR images and can be used for remote sensing and mapping of surface area of earth.

Edge Detection of River in SAR Image Based on Contourlet Modulus Maxima and Improved Mathematical Morphology

To cope with the problems that edge detection operators are liable to make the detected edges too blurry for synthetic aperture radar(SAR)images,an edge detection method for detecting river in SAR images is proposed based on contourlet modulus maxima and improved mathematical morphology.The SAR image is firstly transformed to a contourlet domain.According to the directional information and gradient information of directional subband of contourlet transform,the modulus maximum and the improved mathematical morphology are used to detect high frequency and low frequency sub-image edges,respectively.Subsequently,the edges of river in SAR image are obtained after fusing the high frequency sub-image and the low frequency sub-image.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed edge detection method can obtain more accurate edge location and reduce false edges,compared with the Canny method,the method based on wavelet and Canny,the method based on contourlet modulus maxima,and the method based on improved(ROEWA).The obtained river edges are complete and clear.

Three-dimensional positions of scattering centers reconstruction from multiple SAR images based on radargrammetry

A method and procedure is presented to reconstruct three-dimensional(3D) positions of scattering centers from multiple synthetic aperture radar(SAR) images. Firstly, two-dimensional(2D) attribute scattering centers of targets are extracted from 2D SAR images. Secondly, similarity measure is developed based on 2D attributed scatter centers' location, type, and radargrammetry principle between multiple SAR images. By this similarity, we can associate 2D scatter centers and then obtain candidate 3D scattering centers. Thirdly, these candidate scattering centers are clustered in 3D space to reconstruct final 3D positions. Compared with presented methods, the proposed method has a capability of describing distributed scattering center, reduces false and missing 3D scattering centers, and has fewer restrictionson modeling data. Finally, results of experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method.

SAR image de-noising via grouping-based PCA and guided filter

A novel synthetic aperture radar(SAR)image de-noising method based on the local pixel grouping(LPG)principal component analysis(PCA)and guided filter is proposed.This method contains two steps.In the first step,we process the noisy image by coarse filters,which can suppress the speckle effectively.The original SAR image is transformed into the additive noise model by logarithmic transform with deviation correction.Then,we use the pixel and its nearest neighbors as a vector to select training samples from the local window by LPG based on the block similar matching.The LPG method ensures that only the similar sample patches are used in the local statistical calculation of PCA transform estimation,so that the local features of the image can be well preserved after coefficients shrinkage in the PCA domain.In the second step,we do the guided filtering which can effectively eliminate small artifacts left over from the coarse filtering.Experimental results of simulated and real SAR images show that the proposed method outstrips the state-of-the-art image de-noising methods in the peak signalto-noise ratio(PSNR),the structural similarity(SSIM)index and the equivalent number of looks(ENLs),and is of perceived image quality.

NEW SAR IMAGE INTERPRETATION METHOD OF AIRCRAFT BASED ON JOINT TIME-FREQUENCY ANALYSIS

With the continuous improvement of Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) resolution, interpreting the small targets like aircraft in SAR images becomes possible and turn out to be a hot spot in SAR application research. However, due to the complexity of SAR imaging mechanism, interpreting targets in SAR images is a tough problem. This paper presents a new aircraft interpretation method based on the joint time-frequency analysis and multi-dimensional contrasting of basic structures. Moreover, SAR data acquisition experiment is designed for interpreting the aircraft. Analyzing the experiment data with our method, the result shows that the proposed method largely makes use of the SAR data information. The reasonable results can provide some auxiliary support for the SAR images manual interpretation.

SAR image de-noising based on texture strength and weighted nuclear norm minimization

As synthetic aperture radar（SAR） has been widely used nearly in every field, SAR image de-noising became a very important research field. A new SAR image de-noising method based on texture strength and weighted nuclear norm minimization（WNNM） is proposed. To implement blind de-noising, the accurate estimation of noise variance is very important. So far, it is still a challenge to estimate SAR image noise level accurately because of the rich texture. Principal component analysis（PCA） and the low rank patches selected by image texture strength are used to estimate the noise level. With the help of noise level, WNNM can be expected to SAR image de-noising. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms many excellent de-noising algorithms such as Bayes least squares-Gaussian scale mixtures（BLS-GSM） method, non-local means（NLM） filtering in terms of both quantitative measure and visual perception quality.

Simultaneous Speckle Reduction and SAR Image Compression Using Multiwavelet Transform

Synthetic aperture radar （SAR） images are corrupted by multiplicative speckle noise which limits the performance of the classical coder/decoder algorithm in spatial domain. The relatively new transform of multiwavelets can possess desirable features simultaneously, such as orthogonality and symmetry, while scalar wavelets cannot. In this paper we propose a compression scheme combining with speckle noise reduction within the multiwavelet framework. Compared with classical set partitioning in hierarchical trees （SPIHT） algorithm, our method achieves favorable peak signal to noise ratio （PSNR） and superior speckle noise reduction performances.

SAR image despeckling via Lp norm regularization

Synthetic aperture radar(SAR) image despeckling has been an attractive problem in remote sensing.The main challenge is to suppress speckle while preserving edges and preventing unnatural artifacts(such as annoying artifacts in homogeneous regions and over-smoothed edges).To address these problems,this paper proposes a new variational model with a nonconvex nonsmooth Lp(0 <p<1) norm regularization.It incorporates Lp(0<p<1) norm regularization and I-divergence fidelity term.Due to the nonconvex nonsmooth property,the regularization can better recover neat edges and homogeneous regions.The Ⅰ-divergence fidelity term is used to suppress the multiplicative noise effectively.Moreover,based on variable-splitting and alternating direction method of multipliers(ADMM) method,an efficient algorithm is proposed for solving this model.Intensive experimental results demonstrate that nonconvex nonsmooth model is superior to other state-of-the-art approaches qualitatively and quantitatively.

A non-local vectorial total variational model for multichannel SAR image speckle suppression

Abstract This paper aims at the multichannel synthetic aperture radar （SAR） image speckle reduc- tion. This paper proposes a novel energy minimized regularization model for multichannel image denoising, which is an extension of the non-local total variational model for gray-scale image. It contains two terms, namely the vectorial data fidelity term and the non-local vectorial total variation term. The latter is constructed by high-dimensional non-local gradient that contains the structure information of the multichannel image. The existence and the uniqueness of the solution of the model are proved. A fixed point iterative algorithm is designed to acquire the solution of this model. The convergence property of this algorithm is proved as well. This model is applied to the multipolarimetric and multi-temporal RAI）ARSAT-2 images despeckling. The result shows that this model performs better than the original vectorial total variational model on texture preserving.

Fusion of SAR and Optical Image for Sea Ice Extraction

It is difficult to balance local details and global distribution using a single source image in marine target detection of a large scene.To solve this problem,a technique based on the fusion of optical image and synthetic aperture radar(SAR)image for the extraction of sea ice is proposed in this paper.The Band 2(B2 image of Sentinel-2(S2 in the research area is selected as optical image data.Preprocessing on the optical image,such as resampling,projection transformation and format conversion,are conducted to the S2 dataset before fusion.Imaging characteristics of the sea ice have been analyzed,and a new deep learning(DL)model,OceanTDL5,is built to detect sea ices.The fusion of the Sentinel-1(S1 and S2 images is realized by solving the optimal pixel values based on deriving Poisson Equation.The experimental results indicate that the use of a fused image improves the accuracy of sea ice detection compared with the use of a single data source.The fused image has richer spatial details and a clearer texture compared with the original optical image,and its material sense and color are more abundant.

OGSRN:Optical-guided super-resolution network for SAR image

Although Convolutional Neural Networks(CNNs)have significantly improved the development of image Super-Resolution(SR)technology in recent years,the existing SR methods for SAR image with large scale factors have rarely been studied due to technical difficulty.A more efficient method is to obtain comprehensive information to guide the SAR image reconstruction.Indeed,the co-registered High-Resolution(HR)optical image has been successfully applied to enhance the quality of SAR image due to its discriminative characteristics.Inspired by this,we propose a novel Optical-Guided Super-Resolution Network(OGSRN)for SAR image with large scale factors.Specifically,our proposed OGSRN consists of two sub-nets:a SAR image SuperResolution U-Net(SRUN)and a SAR-to-Optical Residual Translation Network(SORTN).The whole process during training includes two stages.In stage-1,the SR SAR images are reconstructed by the SRUN.And an Enhanced Residual Attention Module(ERAM),which is comprised of the Channel Attention(CA)and Spatial Attention(SA)mechanisms,is constructed to boost the representation ability of the network.In stage-2,the output of the stage-1 and its corresponding HR SAR images are translated to optical images by the SORTN,respectively.And then the differences between SR images and HR images are computed in the optical space to obtain feedback information that can reduce the space of possible SR solution.After that,we can use the optimized SRUN to directly produce HR SAR image from Low-Resolution(LR)SAR image in the testing phase.The experimental results show that under the guidance of optical image,our OGSRN can achieve excellent performance in both quantitative assessment metrics and visual quality.

Matching suitable feature construction for SAR images based on evolutionary synthesis strategy

In the paper,a set of algorithms to construct synthetic aperture radar（SAR）matching suitable features are frstly proposed based on the evolutionary synthesis strategy.During the process,on the one hand,the indexes of primary matching suitable features（PMSFs）are designed based on the characteristics of image texture,SAR imaging and SAR matching algorithm,which is a process involving expertise;on the other hand,by designing a synthesized operation expression tree based on PMSFs,a much more flexible expression form of synthesized features is built,which greatly expands the construction space.Then,the genetic algorithm-based optimized searching process is employed to search the synthesized matching suitable feature（SMSF）with the highest effciency,largely improving the optimized searching effciency.In addition,the experimental results of the airborne synthetic aperture radar ortho-images of C-band and P-band show that the SMSFs gained via the algorithms can reflect the matching suitability of SAR images accurately and the matching probabilities of selected matching suitable areas of ortho-images could reach 99±0.5%.