Title :
Exploiting Regular Patterns to Group Persistent Scatterers in Urban Areas
Author :
Schack, Lukas ; Soergel, Uwe
Author_Institution :
Inst. of Photogrammetry & Geoinf., Leibniz Univ. Hannover, Hannover, Germany
Abstract :
Urban areas are often characterized by geometrically simple and repetitive patterns, in particular, in cases where settlements have been built-up from scratch in a well-planned manner, e.g., according to architectonic, economic, or sociopolitic constraints. This leads to preferred rectangular and regular alignment of objects like windows or balconies at façades for the majority of buildings in modern cities. In this paper, we show how this regularity can be exploited for the challenging task of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) scene description and demonstrate the applicability in case studies. We present a virtually parameter-free method to segment a persistent scatterer point cloud and fit optimal lattices to describe separate façades. Formulating the PS as nodes in a graph allows us to use spectral graph theory to distinguish lattices even when they are overlapping or disturbed due to layover. As a result, we obtain an object-based representation of the SAR data, which allows for many new applications in the field of building monitoring and change detection in urban areas.
Keywords :
curve fitting; electromagnetic wave scattering; geophysical image processing; graph theory; image representation; natural scenes; object detection; radar imaging; remote sensing by radar; synthetic aperture radar; SAR scene; building monitoring; change detection; façades; geometrically simple patterns; group persistent scatterer; object rectangular alignment; object regular alignment; object-based representation; optimal lattice fitting; persistent scatterer point cloud segment; repetitive patterns; spectral graph theory; synthetic aperture radar; urban area; virtually parameter free method; Buildings; Geometry; Lattices; Optical imaging; Optical sensors; Synthetic aperture radar; Vectors; Lattice estimation; pattern recognition; remote sensing; synthetic aperture radar (SAR);
Journal_Title :
Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, IEEE Journal of
DOI :
10.1109/JSTARS.2014.2322394