SAR Image Registration and Segmentation Using an Estimated DEM

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images are notoriously difficult to interpret. Segmentation is simplified if a digital map is available, to which the image can be registered. Also, registration is simplified if a digital elevation model (DEM) is available. In this paper it is shown that, if a DEM is unavailable, it can be estimated by minimising an energy functional consisting of a measure of agreement between the SAR image and a digital map together with a thin-plate bending-energy term. A computationally-efficient, finite-element algorithm is proposed to solve the optimisation problem. The method is applied to automatically align an airborne SAR image with a digital map of field boundaries, producing an image which is simultaneously registered and segmented.

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