A luminance edge extraction method using gradient of gray level for synthetic aperture radar imagery

Abstract

In the multistage imaging processing for SAR digital imaging and applications of SAR imagery, extraction of luminance edge for the SAR image is often required. It is well studied to extract the luminance edge for ordinary images. The methods using gradient are effective and commonly used. Because of the serious noise of coherent speckle exists in SAR images, some people believe that edge extraction by using gradient for SAR imagery gives poor results. In this paper, we have derived a rather ideal method for the extraction of luminance edge for SAR imagery with the consideration of the characteristics of SAR imagery. This method uses the relative average gradient and combines detection with tracking.