High-Resolution SAR Typical Targets Extraction and Heterogeneous Image Registration

ABSTRACT

To overcome current difficulties in target extraction from high resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and in heterogeneous image registration, new extraction and registration methods are proposed in this paper according to two typical targets: airport and road targets. For airport targets, Otsu segmentation method is firstly used to obtain potential Region of Interest (ROI). Secondly, Fuzzy C-means Clustering Method (FCM) and HU Invariant Moments are jointed to describe regional features of ROI. Finally, Euclidean distance similarity and nearest neighbor distance ratio (NNDR) are jointly used to complete image registration (between optical and SAR image); for road targets, self-adaptive threshold segmentation method is firstly used to obtain ROI. Secondly, the ratio of average (ROA) and Hough transformation are jointed to get the directions of ROI. Thirdly, opening operators using linear operators based on these directions are used to obtain better ROI. Finally, a new method called Triangle Mesh Angle Method (TMAM) is proposed to complete image registration. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed methods have good matching accuracy and robust registration results, and own research value and promising applications.

KEYWORDS:

• Heterogeneous image registration
• Hough transformation
• HU invariance moments
• Region of interest (ROI)
• Synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
• Target extraction

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In addition, the authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [61671354].

Notes on contributors

Qixue Li

Qixue Li received the B.S. degree in Electrical Information Engineering from Xidian University, Xi’an, China, in 2016. Currently, she is working toward the M.S. degree with Information Engineering, Nanjing Research Institute of Electronics and Technology, Nanjing, China. Her research interest is in the field of heterogeneous image registration. Email: [email protected]

Kuiying Yin

Kuiying Yin received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Xidian University, Xi’an, China, in 1999 and 2011, respectively. Currently, she is an engineer with the signal Processing, Nanjing Research Institute of Electronics Technology. Her research interests include image processing, SAR ATR. She has published over 50 research papers in these fields.