Speckle Noise Reduction in SAR Imagery Using a Local Adaptive Median Filter

• DOI: 10.2747/1548-1603.41.3.244
• Publication Date: 2008-01-15T15:29:24Z
• Authors: Fang Qiu; Judith Berglund; John R. Jensen; Pathik Thakkar; Dianwei Ren
• Keywords: Speckle noise; Salt-and-pepper noise

Abstract Speckle noise is the grainy salt-and-pepper pattern present in radar imagery caused by interaction of out-of-phase waves with a target. A local adaptive median filter was developed that uses statistics to detect SAR speckle and replace it value. The performance evaluated using RADARSAT JERS-1 datasets based on both visual assessment number numerical measures. In comparison established filters, found outperformed others achieving best balance between suppression image detail preservation.