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A fast line-scanning-based detection algorithm for real-time SAR ship detection

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Abstract

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) provides a powerful surveillance capability allowing the observation of target, independently from weather effects and from the day and night cycle. Unfortunately, the automatic interpretation of SAR images is often complicated and time consuming. In support of real-time vessel monitoring, a fast line-scanning detector designed for detecting ships from SAR imagery is proposed in this paper. The detector does not require any prior knowledge about ships and background observation. It uses a novel local gray-level gathering degree algorithm to detect potential targets and then a complementary filtering scheme to reject false alarms. The performance analysis over real SAR images confirms that the proposed detector works well in various circumstances with high detection rate, fast detection speed and perfect shape preservation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (No. 2008AA121805-1) and the National Science Foundation of China (No. 61101201).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19, North 4th Ring Road West, Haidian District, Beijing, 100190, China

    Xiaolong Wang

  2. Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 15, Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100101, China

    Cuixia Chen

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  1. Xiaolong Wang
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  2. Cuixia Chen
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Correspondence to Xiaolong Wang.

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Wang, X., Chen, C. A fast line-scanning-based detection algorithm for real-time SAR ship detection. SIViP 9, 1975–1982 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-014-0692-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-014-0692-x

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