Wavelet-based SAR images despeckling using joint hidden Markov model

Abstract

In the past few years, wavelet-domain hidden Markov models have proven to be useful tools for statistical signal and image processing. The hidden Markov tree (HMT) model captures the key features of the joint probability density of the wavelet coefficients of real-world data. One potential drawback to the HMT framework is the deficiency for taking account of intrascale correlations that exist among neighboring wavelet coefficients. In this paper, we propose to develop a joint hidden Markov model by fusing the wavelet Bayesian denoising technique with an image regularization procedure based on HMT and Markov random field (MRF). The Expectation Maximization algorithm is used to estimate hyperparameters and specify the mixture model. The noise-free wavelet coefficients are finally estimated by a shrinkage function based on local weighted averaging of the Bayesian estimator. It is shown that the joint method outperforms lee filter and standard HMT techniques in terms of the integrative measure of the equivalent number of looks (ENL) and Pratt's figure of merit(FOM), especially when dealing with speckle noise in large variance.