RESEARCH ON IMAGE TRANSLATION BETWEEN SAR AND OPTICAL IMAGERY

Abstract. Compare to optical sensors, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors can work at all time and under all weather conditions. However, SAR images are less intuitive and more difficult to understand. To complement advantages of optical and SAR sensors, a technique of image translation is put forward. Firstly, the concept named as remote sensing image translation is presented, and a set of technology thinking for multi-source remote sensing image translation is also given. Image understanding, object transformation and representation are considered as three key steps for image translation, and some specific solutions for the three steps are proposed later. Finally, an ENVISAT-ASAR image is translated into a TM image by means of feature extraction of grey scale and texture, SVM classification algorithm, seed-fill algorithm and exemplar-based texture synthesis algorithm. The experiment results demonstrate that the translated SAR images are visually similar to related optical images, while the main spatial structure information of original image is preserved, it could fill the blank regions in the incomplete TM image. All the experiments show that the proposed techniques of image translation are rational and effective.