Ship Contour Extraction from Polarimetric SAR Images Based on Polarization Modulation

Ship contour extraction is vital for extracting the geometric features of ships, providing comprehensive information essential for ship recognition. The main factors affecting the contour extraction performance are speckle noise and amplitude inhomogeneity, which can lead to over-segmentation and mi...

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Main Authors: Guoqing Wu, Shengbin Luo Wang, Yibin Liu, Ping Wang, Yongzhen Li
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024-10-01
Series:Remote Sensing
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/16/19/3669
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author Guoqing Wu
Shengbin Luo Wang
Yibin Liu
Ping Wang
Yongzhen Li
author_facet Guoqing Wu
Shengbin Luo Wang
Yibin Liu
Ping Wang
Yongzhen Li
author_sort Guoqing Wu
collection DOAJ
description Ship contour extraction is vital for extracting the geometric features of ships, providing comprehensive information essential for ship recognition. The main factors affecting the contour extraction performance are speckle noise and amplitude inhomogeneity, which can lead to over-segmentation and missed detection of ship edges. Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images contain rich target scattering information. Under different transmitting and receiving polarization, the amplitude and phase of pixels can be different, which provides the potential to meet the uniform requirement. This paper proposes a novel ship contour extraction framework from PolSAR images based on polarization modulation. Firstly, the image is partitioned into the foreground and background using a super-pixel unsupervised clustering approach. Subsequently, an optimization criterion for target amplitude modulation to achieve uniformity is designed. Finally, the ship’s contour is extracted from the optimized image using an edge-detection operator and an adaptive edge extraction algorithm. Based on the contour, the geometric features of ships are extracted. Moreover, a PolSAR ship contour extraction dataset is established using Gaofen-3 PolSAR images, combined with expert knowledge and automatic identification system (AIS) data. With this dataset, we compare the accuracy of contour extraction and geometric features with state-of-the-art methods. The average errors of extracted length and width are reduced to 20.09 m and 8.96 m. The results demonstrate that the proposed method performs well in both accuracy and precision.
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spelling doaj-art-29c22613b3604bfdafa0ef2bfadb1fbc2025-08-20T01:47:36ZengMDPI AGRemote Sensing2072-42922024-10-011619366910.3390/rs16193669Ship Contour Extraction from Polarimetric SAR Images Based on Polarization ModulationGuoqing Wu0Shengbin Luo Wang1Yibin Liu2Ping Wang3Yongzhen Li4College of Electronic Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, ChinaCollege of Electronic Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, ChinaCollege of Electronic Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, ChinaCollege of Electronic Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, ChinaCollege of Electronic Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, ChinaShip contour extraction is vital for extracting the geometric features of ships, providing comprehensive information essential for ship recognition. The main factors affecting the contour extraction performance are speckle noise and amplitude inhomogeneity, which can lead to over-segmentation and missed detection of ship edges. Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images contain rich target scattering information. Under different transmitting and receiving polarization, the amplitude and phase of pixels can be different, which provides the potential to meet the uniform requirement. This paper proposes a novel ship contour extraction framework from PolSAR images based on polarization modulation. Firstly, the image is partitioned into the foreground and background using a super-pixel unsupervised clustering approach. Subsequently, an optimization criterion for target amplitude modulation to achieve uniformity is designed. Finally, the ship’s contour is extracted from the optimized image using an edge-detection operator and an adaptive edge extraction algorithm. Based on the contour, the geometric features of ships are extracted. Moreover, a PolSAR ship contour extraction dataset is established using Gaofen-3 PolSAR images, combined with expert knowledge and automatic identification system (AIS) data. With this dataset, we compare the accuracy of contour extraction and geometric features with state-of-the-art methods. The average errors of extracted length and width are reduced to 20.09 m and 8.96 m. The results demonstrate that the proposed method performs well in both accuracy and precision.https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/16/19/3669PolSARship contour extractionpolarization modulationedge detection
spellingShingle Guoqing Wu
Shengbin Luo Wang
Yibin Liu
Ping Wang
Yongzhen Li
Ship Contour Extraction from Polarimetric SAR Images Based on Polarization Modulation
Remote Sensing
PolSAR
ship contour extraction
polarization modulation
edge detection
title Ship Contour Extraction from Polarimetric SAR Images Based on Polarization Modulation
title_full Ship Contour Extraction from Polarimetric SAR Images Based on Polarization Modulation
title_fullStr Ship Contour Extraction from Polarimetric SAR Images Based on Polarization Modulation
title_full_unstemmed Ship Contour Extraction from Polarimetric SAR Images Based on Polarization Modulation
title_short Ship Contour Extraction from Polarimetric SAR Images Based on Polarization Modulation
title_sort ship contour extraction from polarimetric sar images based on polarization modulation
topic PolSAR
ship contour extraction
polarization modulation
edge detection
url https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/16/19/3669
work_keys_str_mv AT guoqingwu shipcontourextractionfrompolarimetricsarimagesbasedonpolarizationmodulation
AT shengbinluowang shipcontourextractionfrompolarimetricsarimagesbasedonpolarizationmodulation
AT yibinliu shipcontourextractionfrompolarimetricsarimagesbasedonpolarizationmodulation
AT pingwang shipcontourextractionfrompolarimetricsarimagesbasedonpolarizationmodulation
AT yongzhenli shipcontourextractionfrompolarimetricsarimagesbasedonpolarizationmodulation