Title
Multilook SAR Image Segmentation with an Unknown Number of Clusters Using a Gamma Mixture Model and Hierarchical Clustering.
Abstract
This paper presents a novel multilook SAR image segmentation algorithm with an unknown number of clusters. Firstly, the marginal probability distribution for a given SAR image is defined by a Gamma mixture model (GaMM), in which the number of components corresponds to the number of homogeneous regions needed to segment and the spatial relationship among neighboring pixels is characterized by a Markov Random Field (MRF) defined by the weighting coefficients of components in GaMM. During the algorithm iteration procedure, the number of clusters is gradually reduced by merging two components until they are equal to one. For each fixed number of clusters, the parameters of GaMM are estimated and the optimal segmentation result corresponding to the number is obtained by maximizing the marginal probability. Finally, the number of clusters with minimum global energy defined as the negative logarithm of marginal probability is indicated as the expected number of clusters with the homogeneous regions needed to be segmented, and the corresponding segmentation result is considered as the final optimal one. The experimental results from the proposed and comparing algorithms for simulated and real multilook SAR images show that the proposed algorithm can find the real number of clusters and obtain more accurate segmentation results simultaneously.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.3390/s17051114
SENSORS
Keywords
Field
DocType
hierarchical clustering,Gamma mixture model (GaMM),unknown number of clusters,SAR image segmentation,Markov Random Field (MRF)
Hierarchical clustering,Weighting,Pattern recognition,Markov random field,Segmentation,Expected value,Artificial intelligence,Logarithm,Engineering,Marginal distribution,Mixture model
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
17
5.0
1424-8220
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
7
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Quanhua Zhao181.84
XiaoLi Li261.12
Yu Li3156.13