Non-local means SAR despeckling based on scattering

Abstract

Speckle reduction in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images is an essential pre-processing step for a correct analysis and interpretation of SAR data. This justifies the huge effort in the image processing community to develop more and more accurate despeckling techniques in order to reduce speckle effects and then improve readability of SAR imagery also for non SAR expert users. Up to now, nonlocal means approaches provide the most promising and effective despeckling performances. In this paper we develop a new non-local means despeckling technique based on electromagnetic scattering mechanisms. The proposed method, based on a physically meaningful similarity criterion for distance evaluation, is theoretically assessed, tested on a simulated SAR image, and compared to the state of the art.