Coastline detection with time series of SAR images

Dongyang Ao; Octavian Dumitru; Gottfried Schwarz; Mihai Datcu

doi:10.1117/12.2278318

13 October 2017 Coastline detection with time series of SAR images

Dongyang Ao, Octavian Dumitru, Gottfried Schwarz, Mihai Datcu

Proceedings Volume 10422, Remote Sensing of the Ocean, Sea Ice, Coastal Waters, and Large Water Regions 2017; 104220U (2017) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2278318
Event: SPIE Remote Sensing, 2017, Warsaw, Poland

Abstract

For maritime remote sensing, coastline detection is a vital task. With continuous coastline detection results from satellite image time series, the actual shoreline, the sea level, and environmental parameters can be observed to support coastal management and disaster warning. Established coastline detection methods are often based on SAR images and wellknown image processing approaches. These methods involve a lot of complicated data processing, which is a big challenge for remote sensing time series. Additionally, a number of SAR satellites operating with polarimetric capabilities have been launched in recent years, and many investigations of target characteristics in radar polarization have been performed. In this paper, a fast and efficient coastline detection method is proposed which comprises three steps. First, we calculate a modified correlation coefficient of two SAR images of different polarization. This coefficient differs from the traditional computation where normalization is needed. Through this modified approach, the separation between sea and land becomes more prominent. Second, we set a histogram-based threshold to distinguish between sea and land within the given image. The histogram is derived from the statistical distribution of the polarized SAR image pixel amplitudes. Third, we extract continuous coastlines using a Canny image edge detector that is rather immune to speckle noise. Finally, the individual coastlines derived from time series of .SAR images can be checked for changes.

Citation Download Citation

Dongyang Ao, Octavian Dumitru, Gottfried Schwarz, and Mihai Datcu "Coastline detection with time series of SAR images", Proc. SPIE 10422, Remote Sensing of the Ocean, Sea Ice, Coastal Waters, and Large Water Regions 2017, 104220U (13 October 2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2278318

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