Detection and classification of man-made offshore objects in TerraSAR-X and RapidEye imagery: Selected results of the DeMarine-DEKO project

Abstract

The project DEKO (Detection of artificial objects in sea areas) is integrated in the German DeMarine-Security project and focuses on the detection and classification of ships and offshore artificial objects relying on TerraSAR-X as well as on RapidEye multispectral optical images. The objectives are 1/ the development of reliable detection algorithms and 2/ the definition of effective, customized service concepts. In addition to an earlier publication, we describe in the following paper some selected results of our work. The algorithms for TerraSAR-X have been extended to a processing chain including all needed steps for ship detection and ship signature analysis, with an emphasis on object segmentation. For Rapid Eye imagery, a ship detection algorithm has been developed. Finally, some applications are described: Ship monitoring in the Strait of Dover based on TerraSAR-X StripMap using AIS information for verification, analyzing TerraSAR-X HighResolution scenes of an industrial harbor and finally an example of surveying a wind farm using change detection

Detection

“…As an example of an application of the Radon transform to image processing, the amplification of line-shaped signal components for enhancing images with low SNR will be given [9,26]. Figure 14.13(b) shows an SAR image (synthetic aperture radar) of the ocean surface captured by a satellite [31]. The image contains traces of the bow wave of a ship.…”

Validating the Remotely Sensed Geography of Crime: A Review of Emerging Issues

“…Although we did not find any studies that chronicled the active detection of crime (e.g., piracy, extra-legal immigration, smuggling), there exists a plethora of studies that present theoretical or retrospective case studies of how this might take place. These studies tested the use of TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X, RapidEye, RADARSAT, Envisat-ASAR, Cosmo-Skymed, MODIS and ALOS images to detect the presence of ships in the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Campos Basin, the English Channel, the Port of Halifax, the Bosporus, the Ionian Sea, the Southern Ocean and the Strait of Italy [90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101]. There also exists a fairly extensive literature that deals with the active detection of oil spills (e.g., Brekke and Solberg [102]), as well as illicit drift-net fishing (e.g., Horn and Zegers [103]).…”

Segmentation and classification of man-made maritime objects in TerraSAR-X images

“…Higher resolution and polarimetric modes of actual SAR sensors allow going beyond detection towards object recognition and classification. Orientation estimation of objects is often performed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) [2] or Hough Transform [3]. For object segmentation, filtering and thresholding approaches are possible [2] as well as additional application of row-and column-histograms [3].…”

“…Orientation estimation of objects is often performed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) [2] or Hough Transform [3]. For object segmentation, filtering and thresholding approaches are possible [2] as well as additional application of row-and column-histograms [3]. In [4], several detection approaches are compared and estimation of size, orientation and motion is performed together with a fusion of SAR and AIS data.…”