Automatic target recognition scheme for a high-resolution and large-scale synthetic aperture radar image

摘要

Existing automatic target recognition of synthetic aperture radar (SAR ATR) schemes mainly focus on target chips, but there is very little research for a large-scale and high-resolution SAR image that is more practical for SAR image interpretation. How to recognize targets efficiently and accurately from a large-scale and high-resolution SAR image is still a challenge. We present a scheme based on the combination of a salient detection approach, an active contour model (ACM), an affine-invariant shape descriptor, and the corresponding shape context. During the detection stage, the spectral residual approach is utilized to efficiently preselect salient regions. The proposed convex ACM, based on a ratio distance and distribution metric which makes it more robust to multiplicative speckled noise, is then adopted to get accurate candidate target chips. For the discrimination stage, a cumulative sum of multiscale lacunarity feature is proposed to select vehicle chips from clutter chips. Finally, affine-invariant shape features, obtained from the contours by our proposed ACM, are combined with a corresponding shape context to make the classification more accurate. Experimental results demonstrate that our SAR ATR system, integrating all the proposed methods, is feasible in ATR from a high-resolution and large-scale SAR image. (C) 2015 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)