Low Bit Rate ROI-Based SAR Image Compression

Due to large amount of collected data, image compression is both necessary and important for SAR system. Conventional image compression algorithms are incapable of attaining the desired compression while retaining the image fidelity required for processing at the ground station. In this paper, we present a ROI-based SAR image compression system for low bit rate. Region of interest is identified by a multiresolution constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detector and it is encoded with a higher bit rate than background. Performance was tested over the public MSTAR target chips. Results show that SNR of target area with proposed algorithm are higher than that with conventional algorithm and contextual information is preserved.