Improving Pixel-Based Change Detection Accuracy Using an Object-Based Approach in Multitemporal SAR Flood Images

Most of existing change detection methods could be classified into three groups, the traditional pixel-based change detection (PBCD), the object-based change detection (OBCD), and the hybrid change detection (HCD). Nevertheless, both PBCD and OBCD have disadvantages, and classical HCD methods belong to intuitive decision-level fusion schemes of PBCD and OBCD. There is no optimum HCD method as of yet. Analyzing the complementarities of PBCD and OBCD method, we propose a new unsupervised algorithm-level fusion scheme (UAFS-HCD) in this paper to improve the accuracy of PBCD using spatial context information through: 1) getting the preliminary change mask with PBCD at first to estimate some parameters for OBCD; 2) deriving the unchanged area mask to eliminate the areas without changes, reducing error amplification phenomenon of OBCD; and 3) obtaining the final change mask by means of OBCD method. Taking flood detection with multitemporal SAR data as an example, we compared the new scheme with some classical methods, including PBCD, OBCD, and HCD method and supervised manual trial-and-error procedure (MTEP). The experimental results of flood detection showed that the new scheme was efficient and robust, and its accuracy sometimes can even exceed MTEP.