Circular Oil Tank Detection From Panchromatic Satellite Images: A New Automated Approach

Abstract

This letter introduces a new approach for the automated detection of circular oil tanks from single panchromatic satellite images. The new approach considers the symmetric nature of the circular oil depots, and it computes the radial symmetry in a unique way. We propose an automated thresholding method to focus on circular regions and a new measure, circle support ratio, to verify detected circles. Experiments are performed on GeoEye-1 test scenes, and the results reveal that the new approach is capable of detecting oil tanks with high success. The performance of our approach is also compared with leading techniques from the literature and has provided comparable or superior results.