Automatic Detection of the Ice Edge in SAR Imagery Using Curvelet Transform and Active Contour

Jiange Liu,Paul Fieguth,K Scott,Ahmed Gawish

doi:10.3390/rs8060480

Jiange Liu, Paul Fieguth + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/rs8060480

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Abstract

A novel method based on the curvelet transform and active contour method to automatically detect the ice edge in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery is proposed. The method utilizes the location of high curvelet coefficients to determine regions in the image likely to contain the ice edge. Using an ice edge from passive microwave sea ice concentration for initialization, these regions are then joined using the active contour method to obtain the final ice edge. The method is evaluated on four dual polarization SAR scenes of the Labrador sea. Through comparison of the ice edge with that from image analysis charts, it is demonstrated that the proposed method can detect the ice edge effectively in SAR images. This is particularly relevant when the marginal ice zone is diffuse or the ice is thin, and using the definition of ice edge from the passive microwave ice concentration would underestimate the ice edge location. It is expected that the method may be useful for operations in marginal ice zones, such as offshore drilling, where a high resolution estimate of the ice edge location is required. It could also be useful as a first guess for an ice analyst, or for the assimilation of SAR data.

Highlights

Sea ice plays an important role in climate and weather, and has a significant impact on human activities in the polar region and marginal seas
The ice near the ice edge for this scene appears to be very thin. This was verified through comparison with the ice type information in the image analysis, which identified these regions as new ice
The ice edge from the image analysis chart is projected to the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image, which is on a Cartesian grid

Summary

Introduction

Sea ice plays an important role in climate and weather, and has a significant impact on human activities in the polar region and marginal seas. The warming climate has resulted in more significant coverage of the MIZ in many regions of the ocean, with these zones covering wider regions over a longer time period during the summer months [4]. These changing ice conditions are occurring in tandem with economic changes in the Arctic, which are leading to increasing numbers of vessels in the region [5,6,7]. An accurate estimate of the ice edge location may reduce the likelihood of ice colliding with the drilling platform

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