SAR image change detection based on object-based method

The high-resolution images, acquired by the new SAR sensors, provide opportunities to detect changes more accurately. The traditional pixel-based change detection method cannot adapt to the change detection of objects in different spatial scales, especially in build-up area, which has strong speckle noise. Recently, Object-based image analysis provides a feasible idea to solve this. In this paper, a SAR change detection method based on object-based image analysis is proposed. In proposed method, temporally sequential images are combined and segmented together to produce spatially corresponding image-objects. With different parameter settings, the segmentation maps of different scales are generated, which result in different difference maps. To utilize the information of different scales, a fusion method is employed to generate the final difference map, and a binary change detection map is produced on the basis of the difference map. The experiments show that object-based method is more efficient than the pixel-based method.