A novel method for ship detection in polarimetric SAR images using GOPCE

Abstract

In this paper, a novel method for ship detection in fully polarimetric SAR images is developed. This method employs the generalized optimization of polarimetric contrast enhancement (GOPCE) to maximize the target-to-clutter ratio in an image. For comparison, the traditional OPCE, polarimetric matched filter (PMF) and polarimetric whitening filter (PWF) are also used. Experiments results of the NASA/JPL AIRSAR C-Band image over Sydney Coast show that the proposed method has a considerably improvement as to enlarge the separation of ships and sea clutter, demonstrating a robust detection performance. (5 pages)