Scale-space clustering and classification of SAR images with numerous attributes and classes

Abstract

Describes application of scale-space clustering to the classification of a multispectral and polarimetric SAR image of an agricultural site. After polarimetric and radiometric calibration and noise cancellation, the authors extracted a 12-dimensional feature vector for each pixel from the scattering matrix. The algorithm was able to partition without supervision a set of unlabeled vectors from 13 selected sites, each site corresponding to a distinct crop, into 13 clusters. The cluster parameters were then used to classify the whole image. The classification map is much less noisy and more accurate than those obtained by hierarchical rules. The algorithm can handle variabilities in cluster densities, cluster sizes and ellipsoidal shapes.<>