CHARACTERIZATION OF SAR IMAGES WITH WEIGHTED AMPLITUDE TRANSITION GRAPHS

Abstract. We propose a new technique for SAR image texture characterization based on ordinal pattern transition graphs. The proposal consists in (i) transforming a 2-D patch of data into a time series using a Hilbert Space Filling Curve, (ii) building an Ordinal Pattern Transition Graph with weighted edges; (iii) obtaining a probability distribution function from this graph; (iv) computing the Entropy and Statistical Complexity of this distribution. The weight of the edges is related to the absolute difference of observations. This modification takes into account the scattering properties of the target, and leads to a good characterization of several types of textures. Experiments with data from Munich urban areas, Guatemala forest regions, and Cape Canaveral ocean samples demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique, which achieves satisfactory levels of separability.