CHANGE DETECTION UNDER THE FOREST IN MULTITEMPORAL

FULL-POLARIMETRIC P-BAND SAR IMAGES USING PAULI DECOMPOSITION

Rafael A. S. Rosa1,2 , David Fernandes2 , Thiago L. M. Barreto1 , Christian Wimmer1 , Joao B. Nogueira Jr.3
1
Bradar Industria S/A - Embraer Defesa & Seguranca
12244-000 - Sao Jose dos Campos-SP, Brasil
2
Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica - ITA - DCTA
12228-900 - Sao Jose dos Campos-SP, Brasil
3
Santo Antonio Energia S/A
76801-910 - Porto Velho-RO, Brasil

rafael.rosa@bradar.com.br, david@ita.br, thiago.luiz@bradar.com.br, office@wimmer-christian.de

joaobosco@santoantonioenergia.com.br

ABSTRACT Radar), seems appropriate to equatorial and tropical forest

Forest monitoring is a major concern today due to climate
changes, conservation of fauna and flora and to the lack of
water[1]. Therefore, several environmental monitoring tech-
niques have been developed and used to detect changes in
the scenes. The use of SAR is appropriate to detect changes
due to its independence of atmospheric and lighting condi-
tions. However, currently, also SAR change detection has
been faced limitations due to human ilegal activities under the
forest. This paper will present a new method of change detec-
tion by multitemporal full-polarimetric P-band SAR imagery
using Pauli decomposition to separate artificial objects and,
therefore, detect targets that appeared and disappeared under
the canopy. Experimental tests have been performed using
real SAR data obtained by the airborne sensor OrbiSAR-2
from Bradar and hidden targets in the Brazilian Atlantic For-
est (Tropical Rain Forest).
Index Terms Change detection, multitemporal images,
P-band, synthetic aperture radar, SAR
monitoring due to its independence of weather conditions,
without losing the high resolution[3], however there are some
ilegal activities under the forest dificult to detect with SAR
change detection algorithms. The purpose of this study was
to develop an algorithm able to automatically detect changes
under the forest in a time interval using full-polarimetric P-
band SAR orthoimages from temporally spaced acquisitions,
however with identical geometry (multitemporal). The goal
was to create an efficient tool able to automatically iden-
tify regions where there was some kind of change, such as
appearance of vehicles, camps and small buildings.
2. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
Let there be a set of multitemporal P-band SAR images ob-
served under the same geometric conditions (look angle, alti-
tude, etc.):

1. INTRODUCTION
One of the most important topics today is the climate change,
and one of its main possible cause is the deforestation of
rainforests around the world. Just talking about the Ama-
zon Forest, the last years deforestation average has been
5,000km2 /year[2]. This scenario makes more and more or-
ganizations and institutions search surveillance methods for
the reduction and prevention of deforestation. The change
detection by radar imaging, mainly SAR (Synthetic Aperture
pt = {pkt : k = 0, 1, ..., K; t = 0, 1, ..., T } (1)
Where pk,t is the k-th image of size M xN acquired at the
instant t (Figure 1). The purpose is to detect changes between
the consecutive sets pt and pt+1 . There is the availability of
full-polarimetric P-band SAR images, for each time t, i.e.,
K = 4. The used approach can be divided in two main parts:
Artificial Target Detection and Change Detection in Artificial
Targets.

978-1-5090-3332-4/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE 6213 IGARSS 2016


Fig. 1. Set of multitemporal SAR images[3].
2.1. Artificial Target Detection
Initially, it performed the detection of artificial targets in the
set of full-polarimetric P-band images both for the instant t
as for the instant t + 1 separately. The first step is to do the
Polarimetric Cross-talk Calibration [4]. And the last step is
to do the Pauli Polarimetric Decomposition. The result of this
part will be a set of multitemporal polarimetric decomposed
images.
The matrix [Sa ] is the scattering matrix of a sphere, a
plate or a trihedral. In this way, the intensity of the coeffi-
cient determines the power scattered by targets character-
ized by single- or odd-bounce. The second matrix, [Sb ] is
the scattering mechanism of a dihedral oriented at 0 degrees,
consequently represents the power scattered by this type of
targets. Finally, the third matrix [Sc ] is the scattering mecha-
nism of a diplane oriented at 45 degrees, i.e., the coefficient
is referred to those scatterers which are able to return the or-
thogonal polarization, from which, one of the best examples
is the volume scattering produced by the forest canopy. As
we want to see only the changes under the forest, we do not
use the coefficient . In this way, the new image we will use
in the next part will be:
p
yt = |t |2 + |t |2 (9)
Figure 2 shows an example of original HH P-band im-
age (left) and their respective polarimetric decomposed image
(right).

2.1.1. Pauli Decomposition

The basic idea of the Pauli Decomposition is to express
the matrix [S] as the sum of elementary scattering matri-
ces representing certain types of deterministic scattering
mechanisms[5]. If we considered the conventional orthog-
onal linear (h,v) basis and Shv = Sv h the Pauli basis [Sa ],
[Sb ], [Sc ] is given by the following three 2x2 matrices:
 
1 1 0
[Sa ] = (2) Fig. 2. Example of HH P-band (left) and polarimetric decom-
2 0 1
  posed (right) images.
1 1 0
[Sb ] = (3)
2 0 1
  2.2. Change Detection in Artificial Targets
1 0 1
[Sc ] = (4)
2 1 0 This part of the methodology is to detect changes between yt
and yt+1 . We do the Speckle Filtering, the Difference Calcu-
Consequently, given a measured scattering matrix [S], it lation, the Threshold Applying and the Morph Close Opera-
can be expressed as follows: tion[6]. The difference from the cited paper is the use of the
Anisotropic Diffusion Filtering explained bellow. The final

S Shv
 product of this part is a binary mask that indicates artificial
[S] = hh = [Sa ] + [Sb ] + [Sc ] (5) target changes (Figure 3).
Shv Sv v

where: 2.2.1. Anisotropic Diffusion Filtering

Shh + Sv v An intrinsic effect of radar-based systems is the speckling
= (6)
2 caused by multiplicative noise which can be observed in ev-
ery SAR image after processing. Due to this fact, several
Shh Sv v approaches has been studied in order to reduce undesired
= (7)
2 speckle effects under the constraint of keeping original and
important features such as edges, structures and shapes [7, 8].
= 2Shv (8) Originally proposed for general image processing filtering

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 Fig. 3. Example of final binary mask.
Fig. 4. One of hidden cars under the forest.

[9], the Anisotropic Diffusion Filtering (ADF) [10] performs

a noise reducing iteratively (until i-th iteration) along scales Table 1. Hidden cars measured and nearest detected coordi-
trying to preserve important characteristics controlled by a nates.
tensor parameter K empirically estimated. Several studies Car E(m) N(m) Edet (m) Ndet (m) D(m)
attempts to estimate this parameters, however depending on 1 348121 7355321 348128 7355336 16.6
specific image employment domains such as magnetic res- 2 348204 7355358 348234 7355365 30.8
onance by ADF, general computer vision images, and few 3 348823 7355506 348823 7355502 4.0
remote sensing SAR applications [11] with SRAD for single 4 348622 7357020 348622 7357023 3.0
images and [12] with APAD for full polarimetric images. All
of this methods are based on different ways of specifying
broken.
an edge-preserving function g(.) originally proposed by [10]
with respect to local image gradients I given an image I: It was also observed that many points were detected on
cities, highways or roads, i.e., it is probably vehicles.
2
g(I) = e(||/K) (10) Finally, we can say the program detect 2 hidden cars.
Maybe, the error source of the other 2 hidden cars is the DEM
used to do the geocodification (15.0m planimetric resolution).
3. PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The proposed change detection algorithm was implemented 5. ACKNOWLEDGMENT

in IDL (Interactive Data Language) and experiments have
been performed using multitemporal SAR images provided
by Secretaria do Meio Ambiente do Estado de Sao Paulo
(SMA) acquired by the airborne sensor OrbiSAR-2 from
Bradar. Two multitemporal set of full-polarimetric P-band
images were collected at 2015 August 13th and 18th in the
Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Cubatao-SP) and processed in Sao
Jose dos Campos-SP by Bradar. These images cover an area
of 32.90km2 with 1.0m planimetric resolution. The Sao Paulo
Environmental Military Police (PMA-SP) and SMA hid four
cars under the forest at 2015 August 17th (Figure 4).
We applied the proposed method with = 45 and K =
20. The algorithm detect 186 changes. Table 1 presents the
measured and nearest detected point coordinates of each hid-
den car, and their respective difference.
4. CONCLUSION
Despite finding a large number of changes, probably the most
part can actually be changes in the environment, such as trees
The authors would like to thank Secretaria do Meio Am-
biente do Estado de Sao Paulo (SMA) and the Sao Paulo
Environmental Military Police (PMA-SP) for providing the
multitemporal SAR orthoimages and hidding the targets used
in this work.
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