We propose a panchromatic (Pan) and multispectral (MS) image fusion method in order to synthesize an MS image with enhanced spatial resolution and preserved spectral information of the original MS image. The proposed method is based on the spatial frequency and the à trous wavelet transform (SFATWT). The à trous wavelet transform (ATWT) is used to decompose Pan and MS images into low and high frequencies. The spatial frequency is exploited in the image fusion rules to improve the details or the high-frequency information which will be injected into the MS image. The ATWT reconstruction makes it possible to produce MS image with high spatial resolution. To validate the proposed method, two image sets are used. The first one is acquired by the SPOT (Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre) satellite with a resolution ratio of 2. The second one is the Algerian satellite AlSat 2A images with a resolution ratio of 4. The fused results are evaluated by means of qualitative and quantitative comparisons. The assessment of fused products has shown that the proposed method is promising.
Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images are disturbed by an inherent noise having multiplicative properties called “speckle.” This noise is undesirable, and its treatment is difficult. To reduce the speckle, a polarimetric filtering is necessary to improve the image quality. The purpose of PolSAR filtering is to use the polarimetric information in the different channels to develop an efficient algorithm adapted to this data type, to reduce well the speckle and preserve the contained information. We present the PolSAR wavelet filtering applying the stationary wavelet transform: filtering by multiscale edge detection with two improvement techniques of wavelet coefficients, filtering by wavelet thresholding using the hard and soft thresholding and their two enhanced versions. Our contribution is based on the adaptation of wavelet thresholding to PolSAR data and on improvement techniques to filter polarimetric covariance or coherency matrix elements and span. The methods are applied to the fully polarimetric RADARSAT-2 images acquired over Algiers, Algeria (C-band), to the three polarimetric E-SAR images acquired on Oberpfaffenhofen area located in Munich, Germany (P-band), and to the simulated PolSAR images (L-band). We evaluate the performance of each filter based on the following criteria: smoothing homogeneous areas, preserving contours, and polarimetric information. Experimental results and a comparative study are included.
Phytoplankton are photosynthetic organisms that live in the upper part of the water's surface. A rapid growth in a short time cause the appearance of blooms which can long-term impact marine ecosystem and fisheries. Chlorophyll-a (chl-a) concentrations, the proxy pigment of phytoplankton biomass, is measured with conventional in-situ analysis methods and retrieved from satellite observations. Currently, remotely sensed ocean color data constitute a rich and important spatiotemporal database that has been exploited in many scientific studies and has been shown to be relevant in phytoplankton dynamic metrics. Here in this study, we analyze 11 years of ocean color observations, MERIS (2003-2012) and MODIS (2012-2013) archives, over Algerian coasts in order to compute the chl-a concentrations corresponding to the start and end of bloom event. The determination is based on one of the most used definition of bloom in pelagic ocean, when chl-a concentrations rise above and fall below the full time series median for each pixel plus 5%. Satellite data were preprocessed considering flags to eliminate contaminated pixels, land, cloud and open water pixels. Spatial distribution mapping of results was done showing that the highest magnitudes are concentrated near the coasts. For statistical comparison purpose, the shelf waters were divided into six regions, limited from north by the 1000 m bathymetric curve and from south by Algerian coastline. The east and west limits for each region are chosen considering the marine meteorological regions. This study highlights for the first time the spatial distribution, at high resolution (250 m), of bloom initiation magnitudes along Algerian shelf waters, taking into account the influence of important wadis (small Mediterranean river) flowing there, the marine meteorology and north Algeria pluviometry. Statistics, particularly means, based on the proposed regions, seems to be relevant because they are consistent with the dominant regional pluviometry. In fact, the precipitation causes a runoff of the lands and this flow enters the sea loaded with nutrients. The obtained values can be used to determine the bloom start timing and others phenological parameters.
The speckle reduction problem for polarimetric synthetic aperture radar images is a complex issue due to difficulties on preserving polarimetric information. Several filters have been developed for this purpose such as Novak filter, enhanced Lee filter, and wavelet filters. We present an improved version of the Li filter by adding two false alarm detectors to enhance target appearance. These detectors are applied according to the homogeneity nature of the area to filter. The filtering process is performed by carrying a filtering step for each part of the SLC SAR image, intensity, and phase, independently from each other and using a contour detection technique to maintain the linear structures in the images. A comparative study with enhanced Lee filter is done and allows to conclude that introducing constant false alarm rate detectors gives the expected results: better targets (or reflectors) preservation, smoothing homogeneous regions, and details preservation.
The images acquired by polarimetric SAR radar systems are characterized by the presence of a noise named speckle.
This noise, have a multiplicative nature, corrompt at the same time the amplitude and the phase which complicates the
data interpretation, degrades the performance of segmentation and reduces the targets detectability. From where need to
pretreate images by adapted filtering methods, before carrying out their analysis.
In this article, we study the polarimetric wightening filter PWF of Novak and Burl which treats the polarimetric
covariance matrix to produce a filtered intensity image. We propose two methods to improve the PWF filter: the first
integrates the technique of Lee edge detection to improve the filter performance and detect fine details of the image. This
method is called LSDPWF (Lee Structure Detection PWF). After detecting the edges, we filter the detected regions in
the polarimetric channels by the PWF filter. The second combines the method of filtering by wavelet thresholding with
PWF filter using the stationary wavelet transform SWT. This method is called EPWF (Enhanced PWF). In the wavelet
thresholding, we use the soft thresholding which sets to zero the amplitudes of coefficients that are below a certain
threshold. So we propose to extend the wavelet thresholding, to apply it in polarimetric SAR images and use the
polarimetric information to calculate the threshold on the wavelet coefficients.
We implemented these filters and applied them to RADARSAT-2 polarimetric images taken on the areas of Algiers
(Algeria).
A visual and statistical evaluation and a comparative study are performed. The performance evaluation of each filter is
based on smoothing homogeneous areas and preserving edges.
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