Remote sensing images coastline detection based on geometric active contour models

Monitoring coastline change is a significant task of coastal zone management and evolution research, and it is an important symbol for the study of the regional change of reclamation area. Remote sensing technology becomes an important approach of monitoring changes in the coastline by virtue of its high efficiency, wide range and low cost. Taking the Beidaihe coast as an example, the coastline extraction of SAR and Landsat TM images is extracted based on the geometrical active contour model. This method through setting the initial contour, regards the movement of contour curve as synthesize of force, and minimizes the energy function. It makes the initial contour approximate to the real object boundary. The result shows that the method can effectively extract the continuous and complete coastline from different kinds of remote sensing images.