Patch-based adaptive temporal filter and residual evaluation

Abstract

In coherent imaging systems, speckle is a signal-dependent noise that visually strongly degrades images' appearance. A huge amount of SAR data has been acquired from different sensors with different wavelengths, resolutions, incidences and polarizations. We extend the nonlocal filtering strategy to the temporal domain and propose a patch-based adaptive temporal filter (PATF) to take advantage of well-registered multi-temporal SAR images. A patch-based generalised likelihood ratio test is processed to suppress the changed object effects on the multitemporal denoising results. Then, the similarities are transformed into corresponding weights with an exponential function. The denoised value is calculated with a temporal weighted average. Spatial adaptive denoising methods can improve the patch-based weighted temporal average image when the time series is limited. The spatial adaptive denoising step is optional when the time series is large enough. Without reference image, we propose using a patch-based auto-covariance residual evaluation method to examine the ratio image between the noisy and denoised images and look for possible remaining structural contents. It can process automatically and does not rely on a supervised selection of homogeneous regions. It also provides a global score for the whole image. Numerous results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed time series denoising method and the usefulness of the residual evaluation method.