Integration of synthetic aperture radar image segmentation method using Markov random field on region adjacency graph

Abstract

A novel approach to obtain precise segmentation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images using Markov random field model on region adjacency graph (MRF-RAG) is presented. First, to form a RAG, the watershed algorithm is employed to obtain an initially over-segmented image. Then, a novel MRF is defined over the RAG instead of pixels so that the erroneous segmentation caused by speckle in SAR images can be avoided and the number of configurations for the combinatorial optimisation can be reduced. Finally, a modification method based on Gibbs sampler is proposed to correct edge errors, brought by the over-segmented algorithm, in the segmentations obtained by MRF-RAG. The experimental results both on simulated and real SAR images show that the proposed method can reduce the computational complexity greatly as well as increase the segmentation precision.