POLSAR speckle filtering with structural feature and scattering property preservation

In this paper two speckle filters for multi-look polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (POLSAR) imagery are proposed, which preserve structural features, i.e. edges and line, as well as scattering properties. The filtering operations are performed spatially variant for the edges/lines along their orientation and for the homogeneous areas based on the scattering properties. The capabilities of both filters are demonstrated for the NASA/JPL nine-look POLSAR C-band data, whereby comparisons with the Boxcar, Lee refined and Annealing filters are provided. In summary, both proposed filters show a good performance in speckle removal, structural feature retention and radiometric preservation.