Straight road edge detection from high-resolution remote sensing images based on the ridgelet transform with the revised parallel-beam Radon transform

Abstract

Roads are important basic geographical phenomena and the automatic recognition and extraction of road features from remote sensing images has many applications. However, automated road extraction from high-resolution remote sensing imagery is problematic. In recent years, many approaches have been explored for automatic road extraction, particularly involving road edge detection. Traditional edge detection operators such as the Canny or the Sobel operator are used frequently but there are serious problems of over- or underdetection, and time-consuming and complicated post-processing work is often required. In this paper, a new revised parallel-beam Radon transform (RPRT) approach is proposed. The traditional PRT can have problems with step values, resulting in false edge detection. To overcome these problems we introduced the RPRT, using the harmonic average of the pixel value in every strip of the Radon slice. An algorithm suitable for straight edge detection of roads in high-resolution remote sensing imagery was designed based on the ridgelet transform with the RPRT. The experimental results show that our algorithm can detect straight road edges efficiently and accurately, and avoid cumbersome and complicated post-processing work.