Fast SAR image restoration, segmentation, and detection of high-reflectance regions

An iterative filter that can be used for speckle reduction and restoration of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is presented here. This method can be considered as a first step in the extraction of other important information. The second step is the detection of high-reflectance regions and continues with the segmentation of the total image. We have worked in three-look simulated and real European Remote Sensing 1 satellite amplitude images. The iterative filter is based on a membrane model Markov random field approximation optimized by a synchronous local iterative method. The final form of restoration gives a total sum-preserving regularization for the pixel values of our image. The high-reflectance regions are defined as the brightest regions of the restored image. After the separation of this extreme class, we give a fast segmentation method using the histogram of the restored image.