The Impact of Adaptive Speckle Filtering on Multi-Channel SAR Change Detection

One of the most promising applications of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is change detection. However, the success of change detection algorithms is highly dependent on the type of change being detected. With the advent of multi-channel SAR systems (multi-frequency and/or polarimetric) new algorithms to improve change detection are being developed to take advantage of the additional information. However, these algorithms are still hindered by the speckle phenomena of radar imaging. Adaptive neighborhood filtering techniques have been shown to be effective to reduce speckle, but the impact on change detection has not been explored. The research presented explores the impact of an adaptive filtering algorithm on the probability of detection for synthesized changes.