A physically consistent stochastic model to observe oil spills and strong scatterers on SLC SAR images

A speckle model to characterize low backscatter areas and areas with strong scatterers in marine SLC SAR images is presented. The model allows using high resolution speckled SAR images instead of dealing with multi-look SAR images where, at the expense of a poorer spatial resolution, the speckle is mitigated. The new approach is based on the use of the three parameters of the generalized K probability density function. This speckle model embodies the Rayleigh, the Rice and the K-distribution scattering scenes, which are descriptors of scenes dominated by Bragg scattering, scenes in which a dominant scatter is present and scenes with a non-Gaussian signal statistic, respectively. A large data-set of ERS 1/2 SLC SAR images, provided by the ESA under the Project C1P-2769, is employed. Results show the effectiveness of the approach.