Discussion on sea ice segmentation of high resolution radar data

Abstract

The analysis of high resolution (6m) radar data was carried out on the Antarctic sea ice segmentation. This paper presented two methods for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sea ice image segmentation: k-means clustering method and threshold value method (binary). First, the speckle noise in SAR image was filtered and segmented by two methods. Then the results were compared. It was found that both methods could distinguish the crack and small ice, and these two sea ice distribution results were almost similar. The difference between two methods was: image of threshold value method contained disordered spots and isolated small ice, while k-mean method outcome had clear segmentation boundary and ensured completely segmentation region. So the result from the k-mean clustering method was better. In order to reflect the advantage of high resolution image, the image processed by k-mean clustering method was contrast with Antarctic sea ice concentration data, which was received from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2. It is fully proved that the high resolution radar data can provide the location and the size of sea ice distribution more clearly and more accurately.