Self-organizing feature map based polarimetric SAR data denoising

Speckle has a nature of multiplicative noise which is difficult to deal as compared to additive noise. It complicates the problem of interpretation of the image segmentation and classification. The primary goal of existing speckle filtering algorithms, which are subjective in nature is to reduce the speckle without loss of information. Various techniques have been proposed to suppress the speckle. In this paper we propose Self-Organizing Feature Map (SOFM) based polarimetric SAR speckle filter. The filter is evaluated using fully polarimetric ALOSPALSAR and Radarsat-2 data imaged over Mumbai, India. Quantitative and qualitative results revels that SOFM based approach is effective in terms of bias and speckle reduction.