Image registration and change detection are two important tasks in synthetic aperture radar(SAR) image processing. Conventional researches considered them as two individual problems, where change detection requires pixel-wise registration first. However, they can be integrated into one processing framework and benefit from each other. This paper proposes a unified algorithm to address the change detection problem in multitemporal SAR images considering ambiguous co-registration errors. Based on the framework of optical flow, we designed an advanced objective function by introducing three individual features of heterogeneous, homogeneous and changed areas in multitemporal SAR images. Afterward, the objective function is iteratively optimized, resulting in pixel-wise correspondences and a changed map. Experimental results on multitemporal SAR images show that the proposed algorithm achieves good performances both on registration accuracy and change detection discrimination.

Despite the remarkable progress made in recent years, until today, the automatic detection of changes in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images remains a difficult task due to speckle noise. This inherent multiplicative noise tends to increase false alarms and misdetections. As a solution, we developed an unsupervised method that detects SAR changes by analyzing structural differences. By this method, the spatial structure cues of a pixel are represented by a set of similarity weight vectors calculated from the non-local scale of the pixel. The difference image (DI) is then derived by measuring the structural consistency of the corresponding pixels. A new statistical distance that is insensitive to speckle noise was used to measure the similarity weights between patches in order to obtain an accurate structure. It was derived by applying the Nakagami–Rayleigh distribution to a statistical test and customizing the approximation based on change detection. The CFAR threshold estimator in conjunction with the Rayleigh hypothesis was then employed to attenuate the effect of the unimodal histogram of the DI. The results indicated that the proposed method reduces the false alarm rate and improves the kappa and F1-scores, while providing satisfactory visual results.

The existence of multiplicative noise in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images makes SAR segmentation by fuzzy c-means (FCM) a challenging task. To cope with speckle noise, we first propose an unsupervised FCM with embedding log-transformed Bayesian non-local spatial information (LBNL_FCM). This non-local information is measured by a modified Bayesian similarity metric which is derived by applying the log-transformed SAR distribution to Bayesian theory. After, we construct the similarity metric of patches as the continued product of corresponding pixel similarity measured by generalized likelihood ratio (GLR) to avoid the undesirable characteristics of log-transformed Bayesian similarity metric. An alternative unsupervised FCM framework named GLR_FCM is then proposed. In both frameworks, an adaptive factor based on the local intensity entropy is employed to balance the original and non-local spatial information. Additionally, the membership degree smoothing and the majority voting idea are integrated as supplementary local information to optimize segmentation. Concerning experiments on simulated SAR images, both frameworks can achieve segmentation accuracy of over 97%. On real SAR images, both unsupervised FCM segmentation frameworks work well on SAR homogeneous segmentation in terms of region consistency and edge preservation.

Spliced optical satellite cameras suffering from low stitching accuracy are influenced by various factors which can greatly restrict their applications. Most previous studies have focused on the geometric precision of stitched images, which is influenced by the stitching consistency and the relationships between different inner CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) images. Therefore, the stitching accuracy is of great significance in multiple CCD image production. Traditionally, the line-time normalization method has been applied for inner CCD image stitching based on designed line-times with the assumption of uniform sampling during imaging. However, the misalignment of the designed and actual line-time affected by various factors can lead to image distortion. Therefore, this paper investigates the performance of different normalization methods to produce stitched images with higher geometric performance using the actual line-time. First, the geometric distortions caused by misalignments between the designed and actual line-time are analyzed to show the differences in sampling rate and step-points. To overcome the distortions introduced by the fitting error of the designed line-time, three fine normalization methods based on the actual line-time, respectively called scene-based, block-based, and line-based line-time normalization methods, are introduced and compared with the traditional method. The scene-based and block-based line-time normalization methods fit the actual line-time section-by-section, while the line-based method builds the relationships between adjacent inner CCD images line-by-line. Images obtained from the Sustainable Development Goals Satellite 1 (SDGSAT-1) satellite are used for verification of different methods. The performance of the designed line-time normalization method and three fine actual line-time normalization methods is compared; the stitching accuracy can reach about 0.8, 0.56, 0.5, and 0.45 pixels, respectively. The time consumption of these four compared methods is about 5.5 s, 4.9 s, 5.4 s, and 58.9 s, respectively. Therefore, the block-based actual line-time normalization method utilized in practice can provide a good balance between running time and accuracy. In the future, we intend to find a new way to improve the efficiency of line-based line-time normalization methods to produce stitched images with higher geometric consistency and accuracy.

In the mosaic creation of multiple high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images, achieving an optimal seamline in overlapping areas is crucial for seamless and visually satisfactory results. Many existing seamline generation methods are designed primarily for optical remote sensing images, but due to the differing characteristics of SAR images and optical images, applying these methods directly to SAR images poses challenges in finding the optimal seamline. In response, this paper proposes a segmentation-based optimal seamline generation (SOSG) method for SAR image mosaics. The SOSG method involves a multi-step process. First, SAR image joint segmentation is performed within the overlapping areas. Subsequently, homogeneous areas are identified based on the segmentation results. Following this, a pixel cost matrix is constructed, incorporating homogeneous areas and intensity differences. Finally, the minimum path cost from the starting pixel to the end pixel is computed using the Dijkstra algorithm to determine the optimal path. To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method, experiments are conducted using multiple SAR images from the Chinese Gaofen-3 01 satellite as datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method yields seamless mosaic images when compared to other methods, while delivering satisfactory outcomes. This indicates the potential of the proposed method in addressing the unique challenges posed by SAR images and enhancing the quality of SAR image mosaics.

Shadow in remote sensing images can obscure important details of land features, making shadow detection crucial for enhancing the accuracy of subsequent analyses and applications. Current shadow detection methods primarily rely on the spectral information of images, which can often result in shadow misdetection due to the phenomenon of spectral confusion of different objects. To mitigate this issue, we propose a method that combines topography and spectra (CTS). Firstly, we introduce a new DEM-based shadow coarse detection method to obtain the DEM rough shadow mask, which uses a relationship between the magnitude of terrain height angle and solar elevation angle to determine shadow properties. Then, we use the MC3 (modified C3 component) index-based shadow fine detection method to obtain an MC3 mean map, which includes image enhancement with a stretching process and multi-scale superpixel segmentation. We then derive the Shadow pixel Proportion Map (SPM) by counting the DEM rough shadow mask in terms of superpixels. The Joint Shadow probability Map (JSM) is obtained by combining the SPM and the MC3 mean map with specific weights. Finally, a multi-level Otsu threshold method is applied to the JSM to generate the shadow mask. We compare the proposed CTS method against several state-of-the-art algorithms through both qualitative assessments and quantitative metrics. The results show that the CTS method demonstrates superior accuracy and consistency in detecting true shadows, achieving an average overall accuracy of 95.81% on mountainous remote sensing images.