An Algorithmic Approach towards Remote Sensing Imagery Data Restoration Using Guided Filters in Real-Time Applications

Abstract

The images captured from SAR sensors are inherently weakened by speckle noise. The SAR image processing community targeted this problem with many feature-based filters. Since SAR images are low-contrast images, edge retention is the most crucial aspect to consider. This helps in the efficient retrieval of information. This paper provides a two-step edge-preserving homomorphic SAR image despeckling technique that implements a guided filter as the first step, and a modified method of noise thresholding using the bivariate shrinkage rule and canny edge operator in the Discrete Orthonormal Stockwell Transform (DOST) domain as the second step. The use of a canny edge operator improves overall edge preservation after despeckling. The use of noise thresholding delivers the highest level of speckle reduction in the DOST domain. The detected edges are added to the residual part obtained after removing the noise to produce more informative content. According to several qualitative and quantitative criteria, the suggested approach is compared to some of the newest despeckling methods. The execution time of the proposed method is around 7.2679 seconds. Upon conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis, it has been determined that the proposed method surpasses all other despeckling methods that were compared.