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IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING
Antarctic Sea-Ice Classification Based on Conditional
Random Fields From RADARSAT-2
Dual-Polarization Satellite Images
Tingting Zhu, Fei Li, Georg Heygster, Member, IEEE, and Shengkai Zhang
Abstract—In January 2014, Chinese National Antarctic Re-
search Expedition (CHINARE) 30th cruise raised public concern
since the Xuelong, the Chinese polar research vessel, was trapped
in the sea-ice zone (66°39 20.88 S, 144°25 2.28 E) in the vicin-
ity of the Adélie Depression area on the east Antarctic continent.
This event highlighted the importance of an operational sea-ice
classification map for ice routing to serve ship navigation. In this
paper, unprecedented Antarctic sea-ice classification algorithms
from RADARSAT-2 satellite dual-polarization synthetic aperture
radar (SAR) images were developed using the conditional random
fields (CRF) approach by including multiple features from sea-ice
concentration, gray-level cooccurrence matrix textures, polariza-
tion ratio, backscatter coefficients, and intensity data. Coincident
RADARSAT-2 Satellite SAR datasets with five scenes were col-
lected for ice classification into categories such as open water, thin
ice, smooth first year ice, deformed first year ice, and old ice during
the CHINARE-30th cruise. The effects of deformation, rafting, and
ridging during the spring–summer transition period were over-
whelmed by the spatial and contextual CRF models in combina-
tion with the rich features extracted for sea-ice classification. Four
strategies including statistical distribution and region connection,
multiple features and support vector machine (SVM) integrated
into the CRF model are proposed to describe the sea-ice-type re-
lationships among pixels. By conducting comparative experiments
between the proposed methods and state-of-the-art sea-ice classifi-
cation based on the SVM algorithm, the best was obtained from the
SVM-based CRF (SVM-CRF) algorithm for sea-ice classification
with respect to the three scenes from the Indian Ocean sector and
two scenes of Pacific Ocean sectors including medium-resolution
dual-polarization SAR imagery with a pixel spacing of 50 m and
higher resolution dual-polarization SAR imagery with a pixel spac-
ing of 6.25 m. Results indicate that the SVM-CRF approach has
the capacity for improving sea-ice classification, which can provide
accurate and reliable sea-ice class information for sea-ice analysis.
Manuscript received September 30, 2015; revised January 24, 2016 and
March 25, 2016; accepted March 26, 2016. This work was supported in part
by the State Key Program of National Natural Science of China under Grant
41531069, in part by the National Basic Research Program of China under
Grant 2012CB957701, and in part by the Chinese Polar Environment Compre-
hensive Investigation and Assessment Programs under Grant CHINARE2016.
(Corresponding author: Fei Li)
T. Zhu is with the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Survey-
ing, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
(e-mail: zhutingting62008@163.com).
F. Li is with the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Survey-
ing, Mapping and Remote Sensing, the Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying
and Mapping, and also with the Collaborative Innovation Center of Geospatial
Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China (e-mail: fli@whu.edu.cn)
G. Heygster is with the Institute of Environmental Physics, University of
Bremen, Bremen 28359, Germany (e-mail: heygster@uni-bremen.de).
S. Zhang is with the Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying and Mapping,
Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China (e-mail: zskai@whu.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSTARS.2016.2551318
1939-1404 © 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
Index Terms—Antarctic, classification, conditional random
fields (CRFs), multiple features, RADARSAT-2, sea ice, synthetic
aperture radar (SAR).
I. INTRODUCTION
INCE the large mass of sea ice in the southern and north-
S ern hemisphere introduces the exchange of mass, heat, and
momentum between the ocean and atmosphere [1], [2], the pos-
itive feedback role that sea ice plays in the global climate sys-
tem results in increasing interest in sea-ice monitoring. Remote
satellite sensors can provide continuous measurements for early
detection of sea-ice formation and melting in remote locations
and can monitor extreme climate conditions [3], [4]. The sig-
natures of different sea-ice types can be captured by synthetic
aperture radar (SAR) based on its all-weather and frequent re-
peat observation capabilities, because microwave can penetrate
thick clouds and darkness in Polar regions, indicating that SAR
may be the most effective method for monitoring large-scale
changes in sea ice [5].
Sea ice comprises a number of different ice types including
open water (OW), thin ice (TI), smooth first year ice (SFY),
deformed first year ice (DFY), and old ice (OI). Radar imagery
generates surface roughness information by the microwave sig-
natures and sea-ice dielectric properties, making it possible to
distinguish with SAR data different ice types. Specifically, C-
band SAR imagery provides good contrast between OW and ice
categories. The multipolarimetric (full- and dual-polarization)
SAR imagery also offers improvements in OW, TI, and thick ice
discrimination, compared to single-polarization imagery [6]–
[8]. Dual-polarization data with HH and HV polarization can
significantly enhance the interpretation accuracy and reduce the
ambiguities in sea-ice classification [9], [10].
Nevertheless, the disadvantages of SAR images such as
speckle noise, high interclass and intraclass backscatter vari-
ability degrade the image details and decrease sea-ice class sep-
arability [11]. In order to overcome these limitations of SAR data
for improving sea-ice analysis, early studies used SAR backscat-
ter characteristics and the robust classifier combined with texture
features for discrimination between ice and water in the Arc-
tic. Local binary patterns (LBP) are exploited in sea-ice analysis
[12]. Frequently used texture features are the gray-level cooccur-
rence matrix (GLCM) textures for SAR-based sea-ice analysis
[13]. In sea-ice classification, GLCM textures are widely fed into
the robust classifiers such as artificial neural network and sup-
port vector machine (SVM) characterized by its nonlinear func-
tion [14]–[16]. Pulse-coupled neural networks able to model the
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2 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING
spatial and contextual information are utilized by Karvonen [17]
for sea-ice segmentation and classification. Recently, Markov
random field (MRF) has been widely used in sea-ice segmenta-
tion and classification [15], [18]–[20] since the MRF framework
models the contextual information in labels and also shows its
efficiency in sea-ice classification. However, using the MRF to
model the contextual information in observed data is difficult
since the observed vectors are assumed to be conditionally in-
dependent. Conditional random fields (CRFs) have the ability
to capture the contextual information in both labels and ob-
served data. CRFs [21], which directly models the posterior as
Gibbs distribution and thus allows one to capture the depen-
dence of the observed data, are applied for sea-ice classifica-
tion in this paper. In recent research, CRF has been introduced
in ice–water analysis [11], [22], adopting the multimodality
Gaussian model as a unary classifier. Convolutional neural net-
work (CNN) has the robust features of learning capability via
multilayer neural networks derived from deep learning frame-
work. CNN-SFCRF [22] integrated the robust features into the
CRF framework for sea-ice concentration retrieval and CNN-
SFCRF has demonstrated improvement in ice–water bound-
aries. In this paper, multiple features have been exploited and
integrated into the CRF framework. In addition, for the purpose
of optimization, the category prior derived from SVM classifi-
cation has been introduced in SVM-CRF for improving sea-ice
classification.
These earlier studies focused on sea-ice classification in the
Arctic during ice growth. However, limited attention was paid to
investigate the relationships between sea ice types and backscat-
ter from dual-polarization radar imagery in the Antarctic. The
maxima extent of Antarctic sea ice is 20% greater than that in
the Arctic [2], [23]. Nonetheless, early ice–water discrimination
research was focused on the Arctic. Also, sea ice cover spatial
and temporal variability within the sea-ice evolution process
differs from the Antarctic to the Arctic [24], [25]. The appear-
ance of ice and water shows differences under different ambient
sea-ice conditions with respect to diverse dynamic and ther-
modynamic interaction between ocean and atmosphere, thereby
differing in sea-ice physical and microwave properties [26],
[27]. The Antarctic continent is surrounded by sea ice and OW,
while the land masses extrude into the Southern Ocean. Arctic
sea ice generally grows under quiescent ocean conditions. In
contrast, Antarctic sea ice grows under turbulent ocean surface
conditions, stimulating deformations into rafting and ridging,
and ice motion in response to external oceanic and atmospheric
forcing. Another eliciting factor of backscatter variation is the
seawater flooding of the snow–ice interface when the load of
snow cover is heavy enough to depress the ice sheet below
its freeboard. This process is ubiquitous in the Antarctic. The
counterpart in the Arctic is generally the thick multiyear ice [23],
[28], [29], which has survived at least one melt season. Defor-
mation and moistened snow pack subject to flooding of seawater
can fundamentally influence the sea-ice scattering characteris-
tics. In the Antarctic, surface melting is not common and rarely
associated with the presence of melt water on the surface of
the ice, when compared to the Arctic. Additionally, the ablation
season duration in Antarctica is shorter lived than in the Arctic,
where a spring/summer snow layer acts as a protective buffer,
retarding sea-ice surface melt [30].
These aforementioned differences suggest that several differ-
ent effects trigger the variability of the observed radar backscat-
ter values of different ice types within the Antarctic sea-ice
zone. Therefore, we used multiple features to characterize the
ice appearance under complex sea-ice conditions. In this pa-
per, multiple features including the backscatter, textures, polar-
ization ratio, intensity data, and sea-ice concentration features
were incorporated into the CRF model for sea-ice classifica-
tion. During the spring–summer transition period, deformation
is common and can be resolved from the presented imagery.
Deformation may lead to different forms including rafting and
ridging, openings in consolidated ice, and breaking of thicker
ice. However, dynamic processes such as opening and closing of
ice significantly influence the backscatter and lead to amounts
of subpixel floes, which are challenging for sea-ice classifi-
cation. Since sea-ice concentration can represent opening and
closing dynamic characteristics, we introduced sea-ice concen-
tration into the features group. Textures information was also
extracted by GLCM and a polarization ratio was used for sea-ice
classification.
The purpose of our study is to explore the operational sea-
ice classification algorithm for ship navigation of the China R/V
Xuelong in the future. This icebreaker was trapped in the sea-ice
zone (66°39 20.88 S, 144°25 2.28 E) during the 30th expedi-
tion in Antarctic. Unprecedented Antarctic sea-ice classification
from RADARSAT-2 dual-polarization images was constructed
on the CRF model and multiple features integrated approaches
for a robust sea-ice classification algorithm. The study area
and SAR data are introduced in Section II. The methodology
is described in Section III. Section IV presents the classifica-
tion results and the evaluation. The conclusion is presented in
Section V.
II. STUDY AREA AND SATELLITE DATASETS
A. Study Area
The two study areas are located in the vicinity of the East
Antarctic sea zone including the Indian Ocean sector S1 (65°E to
85°E) and the Western Pacific Ocean sector S2 (130°E to 150°E).
The first study area is around Zhongshan station (69°22 24 S,
76°22 40 E) near Prydz Bay and the Amery Ice shelf. The sec-
ond study area is located around the Mertz Glacier in the Adélie
Depression, where the R/V Xuelong was trapped in the sea-
ice zone (66°39 20.88 S, 144°25 2.28 E). Navigation is limited
to the summer shipping season when the ice is weaker be-
cause of melt and decay and some areas of OW are present.
On November 22, 2013, the R/V Xuelong started its cruise
from the Zhongshan station in order to run across the Antarctic
continent. The average temperature by shipboard underway ob-
servation along the track was recorded below zero. Coincident
RADARSAT-2 Satellite SAR datasets were collected through
the R/V Xuelong cruise along east Antarctica from the start until
January 7, 2014. In terms of sea-ice dynamics and thermody-
namic forcing [26], Antarctic sea ice cover follows the seasonal
cycle. Thus, multiyear ice is less common than in the Arctic.
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ZHU et al.: ANTARCTIC SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION BASED ON CONDITIONAL RANDOM FIELDS
Fig. 1. Locations of the study regions with red frame showing atmospheric
temperature along the track of the 30th expedition of R/V Xuelong as a blue
line.
During the spring–summer transition period (November–
January), the sea ice will also retreat from the marginal ice
zone to the sea-ice pack cover along the coast of the Antarc-
tic continent over Sector_1 and Sector_2, except for the con-
solidated oldest land-fast ice. By virtue of passive microwave
observations, ice growth typically starts in late March and con-
tinues throughout the Antarctic winter until early melt begins
in November and December. During the melt season, sea ice
begins to decay and it drifts into warmer waters. In addition,
during this period, ice concentration can decrease significantly
to values lower than 50%. The sea ice can even retreat to the
coast in one month at the end of January. Until mid-March, the
sea water will refreeze since air temperatures begin to drop;
then, new ice is produced in some OW areas, and finally sea
ice advances to the marginal zone through the process of sea-
ice growth.Table I describes sea-ice classes corresponding to
the development of stages, according to the Antarctic Sea-Ice
Processes and Climate protocol for bridge-based sea-ice obser-
vations and World Meteorological Organization [31]–[33]. The
study region hosts a diversity of ice regimes composed of OW,
TI, SFY, DFY, and OI types. The OI includes multiyear ice,
icebergs, land-fast ice, and ice shelves. The corresponding color
code is also presented in Table I together with a broad range of
sea-ice types. Pixel-based sea-ice classification is different from
the egg code symbols [33], since sea-ice classification maps can
provide accurate location information for different sea-ice types
during ship navigation, particularly in the complex sea-ice con-
ditions of the Antarctic.
B. Satellite Datasets Description
In this experiment, the image datasets used for algorithm
development consist of five scenes from the 5.3-GHz-C-band
3
TABLE I
SEA SURFACE CATEGORIES USED FOR THE SAR SEA-ICE
CLASSIFICATION IN THIS PAPER
SAR satellite RADARSAT-2 over Antarctica around the Amery
shelf and the Mertz Glacier. The original goal of the commer-
cial RADARSAT-1 and the follow-up mission RADARSAT-2
SAR satellites missions, launched in 1995 and 2007, was sea-ice
monitoring. Each scene in Regions A and C with a pixel spac-
ing of 50 m was captured in the ScanSAR wide beam mode,
which provides dual-polarization images in HH (transmitting
horizontally and receiving horizontally polarized signals) and
HV (transmitting horizontally and receiving vertically polar-
ized signals) polarizations. Region D (see Table II) is taken
in HH mode only. Each scene with a pixel spacing of 6.25 m
was captured in the fine beam mode type, offering HH and HV
polarizations as presented in Table II. Table II also lists the de-
tailed acquisition time, coordinate, and image size of each scene.
Table II shows the series of five RADARSAT-2 images acquired
over the east Antarctic regions during the early summers of
2013 and 2014, which were used for sea-ice classification. Be-
cause these are the most suitable overlapping remote sensing
datasets that exist for the Prydz Bay and Adélie Depression,
we restricted the description of the two sectors to the study ar-
eas. Fig. 2 illustrates the locations of the study areas with the
browse images. Large-scale (a pixel spacing of 50 m resolu-
tion) and small-scale (a pixel spacing of 6.25 m) SAR datasets
are combined in Section II-A for the analysis of complex sea-
ice conditions. The combining of these two kinds of resolution
datasets should enable improved understanding of sea-ice clas-
sification, which is affected by the strong inter- and intraregional
differences noted in SAR images.
The images in Table II were taken at the onset of melt during
the seasonal transition from spring to summer. At this time,
various sea-ice types in the region can be seen as shown in
Fig. 2. The icebreaker R/V Xuelong was trapped in the thick
ice shown in Region E of Fig. 2. RADARSAT-2 imagery also
shows the locations of Regions A to E. Regions B and E are the
Prydz Bay and Adélie Depression, respectively.
III. METHODOLOGY
CRFs have successfully integrated contextual information
into remote sensing classification [34]–[38]. Several state-of-
the-art methods under CRFs model have been investigated by
extending the potentials with multiscale region connection cal-
culus (RCC) for SAR image classification [36], modeling the
scattering statistics of SAR for image segmentation [37], and in-
troducing the class boundary constraint for hyperspectral image
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4 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING

TABLE II
LIST OF RADARSAT-2 DUAL-POLARIZATION SATELLITE IMAGES USED FOR SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION

Scene center

Sector Scene ID Acquisition Time Lon Lat Polarization Pixel spacing (meter) Beam/mode type Image size (pixel)

S1 1.Region A 2013-11-22 75.228, −66.938 HH HV 50 ScanSAR wide 10 693∗ 10 190

2.Region B 2013-11-28 76.542, −69.161 HH HV 6.25 Fine 8766∗ 8515
3.Region C 2013-11-29 75.921, −66.746 HH HV 50 ScanSAR wide 10 695∗ 10 190
S2 4.Region D 2014-1-6 143.411, −65.882 HH 50 ScanSAR wide 10 723∗ 10 242
5.Region E 2014-1-7 144.661, −66.609 HH HV 6.25 Fine 8762∗ 8506

classification [38]. In this paper, multiple features are extracted
as the observation in the CRF. Considering the sea-ice label
interaction based on the stages of sea-ice development, mul-
tiple features are extracted and then introduced into the CRF
framework. Furthermore, the SVM classification label image is
introduced as a category prior to optimize a final labeled image.
The SVM-based CRF (SVM-CRF) developed for operational
sea-ice classification is presented in Section III-A.
From the literature review of different CRF models, two ad-
ditional strategies based on CRF are described in Sections III-B
and III-C. Under the CRF framework, Section III-B presents a
statistical distribution method based on CRF (STA-CRF) [37],
which exploits the SAR statistical property for SAR sea-ice clas-
sification. Additionally, the contextual information described by
the RCC reasoning approach [36], [39] is also used for sea-ice
classification, which is presented in Section III-C. A schematic
representation of SVM-CRF sea-ice classification flowchart is
presented in Fig. 4 and described in Section III-D.
A. SVM-Based CRF
CRFs model the posterior distribution over labels X given the
observations Y [21]. Y = {yi }i∈S is the observed field from an
input image, where S is a set of sites in the input image, yi is
the observed data of site i ∈ S = {1, 2, . . . , M } and M is the
total number of superpixels of the input image. The superpixels
are obtained by a mean shift algorithm [40]. Let X = {xi }i∈S
be the category labels of the homogenous sea-ice types, where
xi takes value in the set C = {1, 2, . . . , l . . . , L}, and L is the
number of sea-ice types. The standard CRF has the following:

1  unary
P (x|y) = exp fi (xi |y)
ZCRF
i∈S
⎤ for sea-ice labels. A Bayesian MAP defines the minimiza-
  pairwise
+ fij (xi , xj |y)⎦ (1)
i∈S j ∈N i
where ZCRF is the partition function for normalization, and xi
is the category label of site i. Ni is the set of neighborhood
of site i. fiunary (·) and fijpairwise (·) are the unary and pairwise
potentials of site i, respectively. The unary potential contributes
the information from a single site i of observations and can be
defined as
 P (x|y) ∝
fiunary (xi |y) = δ(xi , l)logP (xi |φ(y), w) (2)
where w is the model parameter. δ(xi , l) verifies δ(xi , l) = 1
for xi = l, and δ(xi , l) = 0 for xi = l. P (xi |φ(y)) represents
the probability of site i taking the label xi conditioned on the
stacked feature vector φ(y) and can be obtained by multiclass
classifier SVM and logistic classifier [41], [42]. This paper uti-
lizes the multiclass classifier SVM to construct the unary poten-
tials. The texture features and sea-ice concentration estimate is
useful for reflecting spatial variation of sea ice [16], [43], [44].
Then, multiple features are exploited for sea-ice classification,
which includes sea-ice concentration estimate, GLCM textures,
polarization ratio, backscatter values, and intensity data.
The pairwise potential provides the interaction strength from
a pair of sites (i, j) and is defined as

fiunary (xi |y) = δ(xi , l)logP (xi |φ(y), w) (3)
l∈C

where v = {vl,l  , l, l ∈ C} is the model parameter for concate-
nating the feature vector μij (y), and μij (y) is a feature vector
{φi (y), φj (y)} at a pair of sites (i, j). The pairwise feature vec-
tor μij (y) at sites (i, j) is described by their differences in cap-
turing the contextual information. If neighboring regions have
similar image features, fijpairwise favors the same class label for
them. A pairwise term could enhance the classification results
since it could model the relationships among the neighborhood
pixels. Especially in SAR images with intense speckle noise, the
pairwise term is significant in smoothing the classification re-
sults and reducing the speckle noise by considering the context
information in the CRF framework.
The pseudolikelihood algorithm is used to learn the CRF
model parameters. After obtaining the posterior probability,
sea-ice classification can correspond to finding the maximum
posteriori of the label image. A maximum a posteriori (MAP)
[45] estimator is used for inferring the optimal configuration
tion energy that can maximize the posterior probability as
E(x|y) = −logP (x|y) − logZCRF and can be represented as
follows:
XM AP = argmaxP (x|y) = argminE(x|y). (4)
Based on (1)–(3), the posteriori probability can be
expressed as
⎛ ⎞
  pairwise
exp ⎝fi
unary
(xi , yi ) fij (xi , xj )⎠.
i∈S j ∈N i

l∈C (5)
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ZHU et al.: ANTARCTIC SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION BASED ON CONDITIONAL RANDOM FIELDS 5

Fig. 2. SAR imagery locations from Regions A (left) to E (right).

are used as the observation to construct the unary and pairwise

potential for every pixel in the superpixel using the formula (2)
and (3). Then, MAP is implemented to get the final classifica-
tion result for each pixel in the inconsistent superpixel. Finally,
the information of the superpixel and pixel level can be inte-
grated using the framework illustrated in Fig. 3. The category
prior is introduced in order to avoid the potential misclassified
superpixel, which tends to make the result worse in the label-
ing smooth method. The architecture of the SVM-CRF method
implementation is described in Section III-D and presented in
Fig. 4.

B. Statistical Distribution Based CRF

Fig. 3. Flowchart of the procedure to recalculate the pixel-wise posterior
probability.
The solution of MAP relies on the max-product belief propa-
gation algorithm [46] in the inference procedure for this factor-
ized form. Finally, the initial label prediction is obtained by the
MAP algorithm. The initial label prediction is compared with
the category prior. The category prior is derived from the im-
proved SVM classification result, described in Section III-D. If
Statistical distribution models, e.g., Gamma, Weibull, Log-
normal, and Alpha-stable [47]–[50], have been applied to model
the heavy-tail and sharp-peaked statistical properties of SAR im-
agery backscatter values. In this paper, statistical distributions
are exploited to be integrated into the CRF framework to dis-
criminate the sea-ice classes from RADARSAT-2 SAR images.
Let ϕ(y) denote SAR intensity data. We have

P (ϕ(y)|x) = P (ϕ(yi )|xi ). (6)
i∈S

the initial prediction label of the superpixel does not match with The distribution of ϕ(y) is an independent condition to x.
the corresponding category prior, this superpixel is regarded Then, aiming at the incorporation with SAR statistical features
as the inconsistent superpixel. The inconsistent superpixels are for sea-ice classification, the STA-CRF can be defined as
required to recalculate the posterior probability according to the 
following flowchart shown in Fig. 3. 1  unary
P (x|y, ϕ(y)) = exp fi (xi |y)
In Fig. 3, S is the label of superpixel from the initial prediction, ZSTA−CRF
i∈S
and S  is label of the corresponding pixels from the category 
prior obtained by the improved SVM classification result. The + log P (ϕ(y)|xi )
superpixel label is not sufficient to represent the overall prefer- i∈S
ence of pixels, leading to the misclassification. In this flowchart, ⎤
the coherence is measured by the comparison between S and S  
+ fijpairwise (xi , xj |y)⎦ (7)
to find the inconsistent superpixels. The inconsistent superpixel i∈S j ∈N i
is required to recalculate the pixel-wise posterior probability in
the superpixel. The corresponding category prior provided the where ZSTA−CRF is the partition function for the STA-CRF
label information to initialize the graph. Then multiple features model, and y is the observed data, which also used the intensity
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6 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING

Fig. 4. SVM-CRF method for dual-polarization RADARSAT-2 imagery sea-ice classification.

data in this paper. log P (ϕ(y)|x) can be modeled by adopting
the Alpha-stable distribution [50] to obtain the distribution pa-
rameters of different ice types. The unary potential function
adopts formula (2) and the pairwise potential function adopts
formula (3). P (ϕ(y)|x) modeled by the following Alpha-stable
distribution, is expressed as

exp{jμϕ − |γϕ|α [1 − jsign(ϕ)β tan(πα/2)]},
q(ϕ) =
exp{jμϕ − |γϕ|[1 + jsign(ϕ)β π2 ln(|ϕ|)]},
where k denotes the kth iteration. y is the observed data includ-
ing the polarization ratio, and the intensity data at HH and HV
polarization. The unary potential function and pairwise poten-
tial function is represented in formula (2) and (3), respectively.
The RCC model is used to establish the region connection re-
lationships between the k − 1th classification results and the
kth classification results. The k − 1th RCC model is the kth
α = 1 prior RCC potential. The region connection information can be
α=1 captured by fiRCC , which can be defined as
(8) 

K
where sign is the sign function. {α, β, γ, μ} are the parameters
of the alpha-stable distribution. α is the characteristic exponent,
and β is the skewed parameter. γ is the dispersion parameter,
and μ stands for the location parameter. Training sample of
each class represents the realization of the alpha-stable distri-
bution. The distribution parameters can be estimated by using a
regression-type method [51]. The alpha-stable parameters cor-
responding to each class are represented using formula (8). With
the alpha-stable parametric distribution, the statistical features
can be integrated into the CRF framework. Then, the STA-CRF
model is able to capture the statistical information from the SAR
images.
C. Region Connection-Based CRF (REG-CRF)
The spatial logic relationships among superpixels are useful
for interpreting the complex SAR images. In [36], a multiscale
RCC model [39] is exploited to reason out the spatial relation-
ships under the CRF framework. In the REG-CRF scheme, the
RCC potential is constructed by describing the superpixels re-
lationship between iterations. In order to integrate the unary
potential, pairwise potential and iteration region connection po-
tential into the CRF framework, the posterior probability is
reformulated as
 schematic representation of SVM-based CRF architecture is
f RCC xk |y = (ωk ,k −1 · Bin) (10)
su =1
where su is the superpixel region obtained by the mean shift
algorithm and K is the number of superpixel regions at k − 1th
iteration. Bin = {bEC , bPO , bTPP , bEQ , bPO } is the histogram
with 5 × K bins for describing the five RCC relationships in-
cluding externally connected (EC), partially overlapping (PO),
tangential proper part (TPP), nontangential proper part (NTPP),
and equal (EQ) relationship. ωk ,k −1 is the iteration potential
weight between the previous iteration xk −1 and the current it-
eration xk . For example, if the i th superpixel xki −1 at k − 1th
iteration and the ith superpixel xki at kth iteration have the
relationship of PO, then bPO = δ(xki −1 , xki ) = 1. Otherwise,
bPO = δ(xki −1 , xki ) = 0. The REG-CRF model integrated with
the RCC iteration potential for the SAR sea-ice classification
has the advantage of smoothing classification results. Then, the
rich spatial and contextual information can also be captured by
the spatial reasoning approach RCC model using the iteration
potential in the CRF framework.
D. SVM-Based CRF Method Implementation
As in Section III-A, the methodology of the SVM-CRF
method is demonstrated. In this implementation section, a
 k
1  unary illustrated in Fig. 4. For sea-ice classification, the original
P x |y = exp fi (xi |y)
ZREG−CRF RADARSAT-2 Dual-PolSAR intensity data first takes the 22°
i∈S
  pairwise incidence angle from the RADARSAT-2 product file as the refer-
+ fij (xi , xj |y) ence for calculating the normalized backscatter coefficients σ0 at
i∈S j ∈N i HH and HV polarization, respectively. Intensity data, backscat-
 ter, GLCM textures, and polarization ratio are the inputs of
 

+ fiRCC xki −1 |y (9) the SVM classifier for the initial SVM sea-ice classification
i∈S result for sea-ice concentration estimate in order to construct
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ZHU et al.: ANTARCTIC SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION BASED ON CONDITIONAL RANDOM FIELDS
the multiple features group. After construction of multiple fea-
tures, including intensity data, backscatter, polarization ratio,
GLCM textures, and sea-ice concentration estimate, the im-
proved classification process was conducted on multiple fea-
tures using SVM as the classifier. In this flowchart shown in
Fig. 4, the initial SVM classification was obtained for sea-ice
concentration estimate and the improved SVM classification
was used as the category prior.
Multiple features were also used in the CRF framework as
the feature vectors. Based on the unary potential and pairwise
potential, the posterior probability of CRF was obtained. Then,
MAP is used for predicting the initial label in SAR imagery. The
initial prediction label is required to compare with the category
prior, and then, MAP optimization process is implemented for
the final classification result.
Since the features are important for SVM-CRF-based sea-ice
classification, it has been described in detail as follows:
1) Backscatter Normalization: Backscattering coefficient
is the basis for extracting features including GLCM
textures, polarization ratio, and sea-ice concentration
estimate. Backscatter normalization first takes a fixed inci-
dence angle of 22° from the RADARSAT-2 product file as
the reference incidence angle. The normalized backscatter
coefficient σ0 at HH and HV polarization was calculated
using the linear function σ0 = 0.1553(x0 − 22) + y0 , re-
spectively [16]. x0 is the incidence angle of each pixel,
and y0 is the decibel value from the original data product
files.
2) GLCM Textures: Textures are responsible for reflecting
spatial variations of different sea-ice types. GLCM tex-
tures are useful for sea-ice classification. In this paper,
GLCM textures, including the mean, variance, homogene-
ity, and correlation, have been calculated for sea-ice anal-
ysis. All GLCM textures were computed on both HH and
HV backscatter images. The work in [16] discussed the
best window parameter for these GLCM textures. The
window size defined as 49 × 49 pixels and the sliding
window size with 8 pixels were adopted in this paper.
The gray-scale quantization level was set as 32. GLCM
textures were implemented using the existing software En-
vironment for Visualizing Images (ENVI software v.4.8).
3) Polarized Ratio: Polarization ratio can be used for distin-
guishing sea-ice types because they have different char-
acteristics at each polarization. A polarization ratio was
generated as the ratio of backscatter at HV and HH polar-
σHV
ization as PR = σ 0H H . The backscatter have been obtained
0
by the first normalized backscatter coefficients step.
4) Sea-Ice Concentration Estimation: In complex sea-ice
conditions, sea-ice concentration is introduced for rep-
resenting sea-ice evolution spatial patterns, which is a
useful feature for the discrimination between OW and
consolidated ice. Sea-ice concentration is the percentage
of ice within a given area, which uses the defined win-
dow size as its given area. The initial SVM classification
result is used to calculate sea-ice concentration with the
defined window size 25 × 25. Within the defined window,
the percentage of the ice area was calculated and assigned
7
as sea-ice concentration of the center pixel. Sea-ice con-
centration is a supervised feature derived from the initial
SVM classification result, which will be described below.
The initial SVM classification and the improved SVM clas-
sification are required for the SVM-CRF algorithm. We need to
describe the setup for the classifiers of SVM and SVM-CRF.
1) Implementation of SVM Classification: The initial SVM
classification result was obtained by using above backscat-
ter coefficients, intensity data, GLCM textures, and po-
larization ratio as inputs of the SVM classifier. Sea-ice
concentration estimate was retrieved on the initial SVM
classification result. Then, multiple features including
backscatter, polarization ratio, intensity data, GLCM tex-
tures, and sea-ice concentration estimate was yielded for
the improved SVM sea-ice classification result. The im-
proved SVM classification result was used as the category
prior of the SVM-CRF algorithm. We employed the ENVI
software v.4.8 for the initial SVM classification and the
improved SVM classification. In the SVM process, the ra-
dial basis function (RBF) was used as the kernel function.
The training samples including 500 pixels of each class
for SVM classifier were selected from the visual reference
classification in each scene.
2) SVM-CRF Setup: Ten training samples of each class in
each scene were selected with a window of 64 × 64 pixels
for CRF model training. All the testing methods utilize
the same number of training samples per class in each
scene. Given the training data, a multiclass SVM classifier
with RBF kernel was selected to calculate the multiclass
probability in the CRF framework.
3) Training and Testing Samples: The visually homogeneous
sea-ice surfaces were manually labeled as the visual ref-
erence classification illustrated in the experimental sec-
tion. We implemented the visual interpretation followed
[52] and [53], which reported the backscatter range of
each ice type and described the characteristic of different
ice types. Training samples have two sets including one
set for training initial SVM classification and improved
SVM classification with limited number set as 500 pix-
els per class in each scene. Another set, with ten samples
for each ice type for the CRF model, was selected and
each sample was selected with a window of 64 × 64 pix-
els. Two training sets were selected separately from the
visual reference classification. Additional testing sam-
ples were selected from the remaining visual reference
classification.
IV. SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Classification with the proposed algorithm was carried out
for OW, TI, SFY, DFY, and OI, based on RADARSAT-2 dual-
polarization SAR imagery. These images were collected to pro-
vide two scales of sea-ice information. The experiments were
constructed on five scenes including three large-scale scenes
with pixel spacing of 50-m resolution and two small-scale scenes
with pixel spacing of 6.25-m resolution, and one scene with only
HH polarization. The large-scale scenes show various ice types
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8 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING
Fig. 5. RADARSAT-2 HH scene example with the subset of the original Region C. Colored bullets indicate the ice type according to Table I. The upper left
shows the test dataset location in Region C as the yellow frame in Fig. 5.
and OW. The small-scale scenes are more important for scien-
tists onboard the R/V Xuelong for their landing and trapping
activities. Both large- and small-scale scenes were analyzed
using the four CRF-based strategies for Antarctic sea-ice classi-
fication, comprising the following Sections IV-B and IV-C. The
four strategies were implemented based on CRF models, includ-
ing the STA-CRF method, REG-CRF method, multiple features-
based CRF (FEA-CRF), and SVM-CRF method. FEA-CRF was
used to demonstrate the role of category prior in SVM-CRF. We
named the SVM-CRF without category prior as the multiple
FEA-CRF. The comparative algorithm multiple features-based
SVM (FEA-SVM) was implemented in LIBSVM to assess the
performance of the proposed algorithm. Since large-scale scenes
cover a variety of ice types in Sectors 1 and 2, it is not easy to
show ice class details. Therefore, in Section IV-A, we take an
example from the section in Region C to illustrate the detailed
visual performance of these testing algorithms. In addition to
visual inspection and comparative analysis, quantitative mea-
sures of the classification accuracy were calculated in order to
evaluate the performance of the proposed methods, presented
in Sections IV-B and IV-C. The overall accuracy (OA) of our
proposed SVM-CRF results is of the order of 92% and the
kappa coefficient approximates 0.9. In Section IV-D, the results
discussion and analysis of different algorithms is presented.
A. Testing Datasets for Comparative Visual Analysis
In Fig. 5, the section of the SAR image in Region C (shown
in the upper left of Fig. 5 as the yellow frame) on November
29, 2013, covers the full set of sea-ice types and OW in the
vicinity of the Amery ice shelf near Zhongshan Station. The
color bullets were manually delineated by visual interpretation
for illustrating different ice types.
1) Visual Performance of Four Algorithms: In order to verify
the visual performance of testing methods, their sea-ice classi-
fication results are presented in Fig. 6. The comparative method
by FEA-SVM misclassified TI as OW, as seen in the right upper
corner of Fig. 6(a), mainly due to the high penetration depth
of the radar ray, which reduces the contrast between them.
Sea-ice classification result of FEA-SVM is coarse and the vi-
sual performance of STA-CRF is moderate, shown in Fig. 6(a)
and (b), respectively. REG-CRF classification approach is ac-
ceptable, which can provide smooth results with less sensitiv-
ity to speckle noise, as presented in Fig. 6(c). The REG-CRF
method has an advantage by maintaining the integrity of every
type and improves the visualization of the classification results.
In SVM-CRF, the leads boundary details can be well preserved
as can be seen in Fig. 6(d).
2) Visual Performance of SVM-CRF Method Using Different
Training Samples: The classification results are sensitive to the
numbers of training samples. Therefore, visual performance of
SVM-CRF using different numbers of training samples is also
presented. As shown in Fig. 7, the classification performance is
improved as the number of training samples increases. The clas-
sification result with three samples of each class for SVM-CRF
shows the worst performance in Fig. 7(a). With five training
samples, the performance has an improvement in DFY and TI.
With respect to the visual performance of 10 and 15 training
samples, their classification results are similar. In the follow-
ing experiments, the SVM-CRF method adopted ten training
samples for implementing sea-ice classification.
3) Visual Performance of FEA-CRF and SVM-CRF: To
demonstrate the role of category prior in the SVM-CRF method,
the classification result of SVM-CRF without category prior
(FEA-CRF) is presented in Fig. 8. From the visual inspection
on Fig. 8, we can see that SVM-CRF is significantly1 better than
FEA-CRF. With good preservation of the ice boundary details,
SVM-CRF provides better visualization. Furthermore, wrongly
classified pixels were corrected by SVM-CRF. This clearly in-
dicates that category prior is essential in the SVM-CRF frame-
work, and also confirms the effectiveness of the category prior
for preserving the class details.
B. Classification Implemented on Large-Scale Scenes
The following experiments used three large-scale SAR
datasets to assess the performance of the proposed algo-
rithm. As an example, the HH polarization imagery with the
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ZHU et al.: ANTARCTIC SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION BASED ON CONDITIONAL RANDOM FIELDS 9

Fig. 6. Example results on comparative algorithms demonstrated on subset of Region C. For the color codes of the sea surface categories see Table I.
(a) FEA-SVM. (b) STA-CRF. (c) REG-CRF. (d) SVM-CRF.

Fig. 7. Example results on SVM-CRF algorithm using different numbers of training samples demonstrated on subset of Region C, (a) 3, (b) 5, (c) 10, and (d) 15
(n per class). For the color codes of the sea surface categories see Table I. (a) n = 3 (b) n = 5 (c) n = 10 (d) n = 15.

Fig. 8. Example results of FEA-CRF and SVM-CRF algorithm demonstrated on subset of Region C. For the color codes of the sea surface categories see Table I.
(a) FEA-CRF. (b) SVM-CRF.

resolution of 50 m for each large scale is presented in Fig. 9(a)–
(c). Their corresponding visual reference classification is dis-
played in Fig. 9(d)–(f) with the color image. The polynya in
Regions A and C is covered with dispersed TI, as can be seen
near the bottom of the original data in Fig. 9(a) and (b). The
significant mixture of ice and water can also be observed along
the ice edge, which may lead to classification inaccuracies.
In order to quantitatively analyze the effectiveness of the pro-
posed methods, the visual reference classification of each scene
was used to calculate the OA and kappa statistic. Quantitative
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10 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING

Fig. 9. HH polarization imagery with a pixel spacing of 50 m for illustrating the large-scale scenes in Region A, C, and D. The color image is their visual
reference classification for each region. For the color codes of the sea surface categories, see Table I. (a) Region A. (b) Region C. (c) Region D. (d) Region A
visual reference classification. (e) Region C visual reference classification. (f) Region D visual reference classification.
TABLE III
REGION A SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION ACCURACY

Algorithm Class OW/% TI/% SFY/% DFY/% OI/% OA/% Kappa

FEA-SVM OW 91.92 7.79 0.19 0.02 0.08 89.90 0.839

TI 10.67 86.55 2.75 0.03 0.00
SFY 0.00 0.01 99.92 0.06 0.01
DFY 0.00 0.00 2.14 92.96 4.90
OI 0.14 1.33 6.01 1.05 91.47
STA-CRF OW 93.68 6.26 0.02 0.00 0.04 82.58 0.796
TI 15.07 84.89 0.02 0.02 0.00
SFY 0.01 20.49 79.28 0.22 0.00
DFY 0.00 0.24 11.44 86.44 1.88
OI 0.32 4.88 12.78 2.12 79.90
REG-CRF OW 94.12 5.81 0.03 0.00 0.04 85.03 0.821
TI 10.44 89.54 0.00 0.02 0.00
SFY 0.00 22.15 77.83 0.02 0.00
DFY 0.00 0.00 18.41 80.11 1.48
OI 0.28 4.77 8.27 1.42 85.26
FEA-CRF OW 91.83 8.11 0.01 0.04 0.01 86.66 0.838
TI 11.16 88.14 0.70 0.00 0.00
SFY 0.01 11.55 88.44 0.00 0.00
DFY 0.00 1.42 26.82 71.76 0.00
OI 0.45 2.72 2.92 0.78 93.13
SVM-CRF OW 92.95 6.98 0.00 0.07 0.00 90.54 0.872
TI 15.96 83.91 0.10 0.03 0.00
SFY 0.00 1.67 98.13 0.20 0.00
DFY 0.00 0.00 3.40 96.60 0.00
OI 0.11 3.02 2.39 0.83 93.65

Surface class acronyms see Table I.

assessments are provided by the accuracy reports for each type
calculated in the confusion matrices in Tables III–V, below.
1) Region A Sea-Ice Classification and Evaluation: The dis-
advantage of FEA-SVM is the misclassification of the TI as OW
along the ice edge and in the polynya. STA-CRF shows robust
distinction of ice from water in Fig. 10(b). By virtue of visual
inspection, the smoothest result is provided by the REG-CRF
method and it can also provide clear boundaries of multiyear
ice located in the middle of Region A. STA-CRF and REG-
CRF are deficient in SFY classification, which has been largely
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ZHU et al.: ANTARCTIC SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION BASED ON CONDITIONAL RANDOM FIELDS 11

TABLE IV
REGION C SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION ACCURACY

Algorithm Class OW/% TI/% SFY/% DFY/% OI/% OA/% Kappa

FEA-SVM OW 96.30 3.36 0.19 0.00 0.15 92.04 0.902

TI 7.51 92.49 0.00 0.00 0.00
SFY 0.08 0.06 97.15 2.61 0.10
DFY 0.14 0.00 17.75 81.19 0.92
OI 0.00 0.00 1.93 0.53 97.54
STA-CRF OW 94.06 5.72 0.01 0.16 0.05 88.98 0.855
TI 10.31 89.68 0.00 0.01 0.00
SFY 0.15 4.49 94.65 0.66 0.05
DFY 0.24 2.90 7.16 89.16 0.54
OI 0.00 0.16 1.94 16.72 81.18
REG-CRF OW 94.78 4.99 0.01 0.16 0.06 91.41 0.882
TI 7.78 92.21 0.00 0.01 0.00
SFY 0.42 2.92 95.21 1.45 0.00
DFY 0.19 1.71 0.35 97.58 0.17
OI 0.00 0.11 1.82 16.71 81.36
FEA-CRF OW 94.18 5.73 0.00 0.02 0.07 88.85 0.843
TI 8.48 91.52 0.00 0.00 0.00
SFY 0.17 33.82 65.99 0.00 0.02
DFY 0.22 1.97 1.88 95.11 0.82
OI 0.00 0.46 0.11 3.72 95.71
SVM-CRF OW 95.53 4.45 0.00 0.00 0.02 94.13 0.919
TI 6.72 92.21 0.51 0.26 0.30
SFY 0.15 2.32 97.5 0.00 0.03
DFY 0.19 2.11 1.35 96.35 0.00
OI 0.00 0.10 0.86 3.06 95.98

Surface class acronyms see Table I.

TABLE V
REGION D SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION ACCURACY

Algorithm Class OW/% TI/% SFY/% DFY/% OI/% OA/% Kappa

FEA-SVM OW 98.92 0.55 0.17 0.29 0.07 82.11 0.760

TI 12.38 65.48 19.58 2.51 0.05
SFY 0.00 0.07 75.73 24.20 0.00
DFY 0.00 0.00 3.26 96.42 0.32
OI 0.00 13.40 0.00 0.06 86.54
STA-CRF OW 95.54 4.33 0.03 0.06 0.04 89.54 0.861
TI 8.83 83.51 7.17 0.40 0.09
SFY 0.00 0.05 87.29 12.64 0.02
DFY 0.02 0.09 11.31 88.52 0.06
OI 0.01 0.00 0.07 4.59 95.33
REG-CRF OW 95.29 4.70 0.01 0.00 0.00 90.50 0.873
TI 7.61 73.43 14.60 3.83 0.53
SFY 0.00 0.03 87.70 12.27 0.00
DFY 0.00 0.10 1.50 98.39 0.01
OI 0.00 0.00 0.00 5.82 94.18
FEA-CRF OW 93.91 5.98 0.00 0.11 0.00 89.25 0.870
TI 5.57 92.13 1.69 0.29 0.32
SFY 0.00 2.54 92.45 5.01 0.00
DFY 0.00 0.18 20.10 76.92 2.80
OI 0.00 0.01 0.07 15.72 84.20
SVM-CRF OW 97.93 1.59 0.02 0.45 0.01 92.32 0.901
TI 0.92 91.09 3.45 4.51 0.03
SFY 0.00 0.69 94.49 4.81 0.01
DFY 0.00 0.16 10.08 89.75 0.01
OI 0.00 0.00 0.06 14.66 85.28

Surface class acronyms see Table I.

misclassified as TI. The CRF-based methods provide the same
good separability between TI and OW presented in Table III. In
Table III, the SVM-CRF method provides about 96% correct-
ness for distinguishing the SFY and DFY ice, and outperforms
STA-CRF and REG-CRF. The kappa of the FEA-SVM method
is 0.839 less than 0.872 given by the SVM-CRF method. FEA-
CRF could not detect the complete iceberg in the center of the
images. Among the four CRF strategies, the SVM-CRF per-
formed the best in terms of visual inspection and accuracy. The
sea-ice classification accuracy table (see Table III) indicates
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12
Fig. 10. Sea-ice classification results in Region A. For the color codes of the sea surface categories, see Table I. (a) FEA-SVM. (b) STA-CRF. (c) REG-CRF.
(d) FEA-CRF. (e) SVM-CRF.
that the largest classification error is TI, misclassified as OW by
FEA-SVM, which is obvious in the subset of Region C shown
in Fig. 6(a). The confusion matrices in Table III also show that
the CRF-based methods offer good performance in ice–water
discrimination. The combined effects of snow cover, sea water
flooding, and deformations observed in Fig. 5 are overwhelmed
by the spatial and contextual CRF models. In combination with
the rich features extracted for sea-ice classification, the visual-
ization of sea-ice classification is improved. With category prior,
SVM-CRF sea-ice classification was much improved compared
to FEA-CRF. Specifically, SVM-CRF classification approach
can give completely consistent results with the visual inspec-
tion in large-scale scenes experiments.
2) Region C Sea-Ice Classification and Evaluation: In this
testing area, the FEA-SVM result is still less sensitive to TI,
failing to distinguish TI from OW. The CRF-based approaches
can provide good boundary details between TI and OW [see
Fig. 11(b)–(e)]. But in the right bottom of image, the West
ice shelf, STA-CRF and REG-CRF misclassified OI as DFY
by 16%, as shown in Table IV. FEA-SVM, FEA-CRF, and
SVM-CRF can provide accurate classification result for the West
ice shelf. This may be due to the contribution of the multiple
features for improving the classification. In the image center, the
iceberg can be detected with whole object by FEA-SVM and
SVM-CRF. The misclassified SFY pixels by FEA-CRF have
been corrected by SVM-CRF, which indicates the effectiveness
of category prior in the CRF framework. Compared with the
testing algorithms classification results in Fig. 11, the best visual
performance is observed in Fig. 11(e) given by the SVM-CRF
classification method. Table IV also shows that the best accuracy
is available by SVM-CRF with 0.919 kappa and 94.13% OA.
3) Region D Sea-Ice Classification and Evaluation: Fig. 1
shows that the real-time temperature in the Adélie Depression
was higher than that in the Prydz Bay area. Around the Adélie
Depression, first year ice covered a major area of Region D and
TI was less than in Region A. Fig. 12(a) shows the same defi-
ciency in poor discrimination between OW and TI as presented
in Figs. 10(a) and 11(a) by the FEA-SVM method. By visual
inspection, OI has been largely misclassified by all the testing
algorithms. The worst performance in separating OI from DFY
is the SVM-CRF method by 14% errors shown in Table V.
The second misclassification error is induced by STA-CRF in
classifying the SFY as DFY. Benefiting from the good perfor-
mance in TI classification, the SVM-CRF method provides the
IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING
highest accuracy. In terms of visual performance, the SVM-CRF
method retrieved the best classification results in Region D by
preserving details from each sea-surface-type boundary. From
Table V, we conclude that the CRF model has confirmed the ef-
fectiveness of the CRF-based methods since it can incorporate
the spatial and contextual information for classification. When
in combination with category prior, the SVM-CRF method
leads to better classification results by modeling the spatial and
contextual information under CRF framework when compared
to the FEA-SVM.
C. Classification Implemented on Small-Scale Scenes
In this section, we present the classification results based
on the small-scale RADARSAT-2 imagery of the two sectors
in Prydz Bay and the Adélie Depression, respectively. The
high-resolution RADARSAT-2 imagery with a pixel spacing of
6.25 m was utilized to analyze sea-ice conditions. The countless
small OI floes can be resolved in these fine resolution images.
Original datasets and corresponding visual reference classifi-
cation in the small-scale regions of B and E are presented in
Fig. 13. The HH polarization imagery of Regions B and E as
presented in Fig. 13 indicate that high resolution data does not
necessarily mean good interpretation since the intense speckle
noise may hinder the sea-ice interpretation.
In Fig. 13(a) and (c), three sea-ice types can be observed in-
cluding TI, SFY, and OI. The small-scale scenes can provide
high-resolution imagery for each sea surface type with fine de-
tails. The small-scale scene is relatively simpler than the large
scale, which hosts various sea-ice types. Small-scale deforma-
tion like ridging (thin bright lines) can be observed in the upper
right corner of Fig. 13(c). The deformation leads to an increase
in the surface roughness, which may make the signature much
more complex in intra- and intervariability of the classes. The
testing algorithms were also performed on these two small-
scale scenes in Regions B and E. The classification results im-
plemented by the testing algorithms are presented in Figs. 14
and 15.
1) Region B Sea-Ice Classification and Evaluation: From
visual inspection, the sea-ice classification result given by the
FEA-SVM algorithm is most sensitive to speckle noise. How-
ever, OI classification correctness by FEA-SVM is the highest.
Fig. 14 shows that the CRF-based methods are less sensitive to
noise, which again demonstrates that CRF-based strategies are
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ZHU et al.: ANTARCTIC SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION BASED ON CONDITIONAL RANDOM FIELDS 13

Fig. 11. Sea-ice classification results in Region C. For the color codes of the sea surface categories, see Table I. (a) FEA-SVM. (b) STA-CRF. (c) REG-CRF.
(d) FEA-CRF. (e) SVM-CRF.

Fig. 12. Sea-ice classification results in Region D. For the color codes of the sea surface categories, see Table I. (a) FEA-SVM. (b) STA-CRF. (c) REG-CRF.
(d) FEA-CRF. (e) SVM-CRF.

Fig. 13. HH polarization imagery with a pixel spacing of 6.25 m for illustrating the small-scale scenes in Regions B and E (a) (c). The color image is their visual
reference classification for each region. For the color codes of the sea surface categories, see Table I. (a) Region B. (b) Region B visual reference classification.
(c) Region E. (d) Region E visual reference classification.

Fig. 14. Sea-ice classification results in Region B. For the color codes of the sea surface categories, see Table I. (a) FEA-SVM (b) STA-CRF (c) REG-CRF
(d) FEA-CRF (e) SVM-CRF.
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14 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING

TABLE VI CRF-based strategies have better antinoise capability than the

REGION B SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION ACCURACY
FEA-SVM algorithms.

Algorithm Class TI/% SFY/% OI/% OA/% Kappa

D. Analysis and Discussion
FEA-SVM TI 82.35 16.46 1.19 85.75 0.783
SFY 4.42 86.97 8.61 In this paper, we have attempted to exploit CRF for modeling
OI 2.43 8.55 89.02
STA-CRF TI 96.63 3.36 0.01 87.64 0.824
contextual information in sea-ice classification using four CRF-
SFY 4.57 95.43 0.00 based strategies including STA-CRF, REG-CRF, FEA-CRF, and
OI 5.07 16.38 78.55 SVM-CRF. The comparative experiment of FEA-SVM was also
REG-CRF TI 96.66 3.34 0.00 89.71 0.843
SFY 2.88 96.02 1.10
conducted in order to highlight the advantages of the proposed
OI 4.05 12.12 83.83 algorithm. The performance of the proposed approach on five
FEA-CRF TI 98.06 1.94 0.00 83.26 0.793 regions demonstrated its efficacy for sea-ice classification in
SFY 19.79 80.21 0.00
OI 23.42 0.03 76.55
Sections IV-A, IV-B, and IV-C. In Fig. 16, the comparisons of
SVM-CRF TI 96.34 3.63 0.03 91.54 0.878 the testing methods in different regions, their sensitivity using
SFY 2.74 97.17 0.09 different numbers of training samples, and their consumption
OI 5.44 8.06 86.50
times are also demonstrated for analysis.
Surface class acronyms see Table I. 1) Accuracy Comparison of Different Algorithms: In order to
compare the performance of the testing algorithms in different
regions and scales, Fig. 16 is presented to show their accuracies
effective in modeling contextual information for sea-ice clas- by OA and kappa. FEA-SVM shows unstable performance on
sification. The best antinoise algorithm is REG-CRF, which different regions. The SVM-CRF algorithm achieved the highest
can provide a much smoother classification map than the other OA and kappa on each scene. With category prior, SVM-CRF
four methods. However, the tiny OI near the right in Region B offers a significant increment in OA and kappa compared to
was misclassified by STA-CRF and REG-CRF as TI. FEA-CRF FEA-CRF. In all five scenes, we observed that STA-CRF pro-
shows the worst performance in distinguishing the OI from TI vided the acceptable accuracy in terms of OA and kappa. In
in the center of this testing area. The OI pixels omitted by FEA- addition, REG-CRF’s accuracy is higher than STA-CRF. This
CRF have been corrected by SVM-CRF due to the introduction may be due to the effectiveness of iteration potential in mod-
of category prior. The best performance for describing the ice eling contextual information. As discussed in the visual perfor-
floes is obtained by the SVM-CRF algorithm, which preserved mance and accuracy report in Sections IV-A, IV-B and IV-C,
many more details when compared to the FEA-SVM algorithm. the SVM-CRF outperforms the other algorithms, which further
Table VI shows the Region B classification accuracy of the five demonstrates its validity in sea-ice classification.
algorithms and indicates that OA of SVM-CRF is highest among 2) Time Consumption of Different Algorithms: Table VIII
the testing algorithms. The largest misclassification is caused by summarizes the computational time for five sea-ice classifi-
the FEA-CRF algorithm, which leads to a 23.42% error in dis- cation algorithms on each test scene. The overall execution
tinguishing the OI from the TI. The larger misclassification by time takes the features and model training time into conside-
STA-CRF leads to a 16.38% error by wrongly classifying DFY ration. The model training time cost is shown in parenthe-
as TI. REG-CRF performed better in small-scale scenes than sis. Among the CRF strategies, REG-CRF used the least time
in large-scale scenes with 89.71% OA. Nonetheless, the SVM- for classification on large-scale scenes, followed by the STA-
CRF algorithm achieved the best result in terms of the accuracy CRF. However, SVM-CRF needs more time for the features
from OA by 91.54% and kappa by 0.878 (see Table VI). calculation. The proposed SVM-CRF method used consider-
2) Region E Sea-Ice Classification and Evaluation: Some able amounts of time in computation and will be studied in our
OI pixels were misclassified by all the testing algorithms. The future work. FEA-SVM utilizes LIBSVM in MATLAB 2011a
largest misclassification can be seen in Fig. 15(a) by the FEA- platform. STA-CRF is run in MATLAB 2011a platform. REG-
SVM algorithm, which failed to discriminate the SFY from CRF, FEA-CRF, and SVM-CRF algorithms are run in Visual
the tiny OI, with a 27.42% error as reported in Table VII. Studio 2010 platform. The features are calculated by ENVI
The subpixel OI floes are a challenge for sea-ice classifica- v.4.8 software. All testing algorithms shown in Section IV are
tion since their small size can be discerned as speckle noise. accomplished by a computer with an Intel Core CPU at 2.4 GHz
In Table VII, STA-CRF and SVM-CRF provided preferable and 48.00 GB of RAM.
performance in OI classification. In terms of the accuracy ta- 3) Sensitivity Analysis of Different Algorithms Using Different
ble and visual inspection for region E, the SVM-CRF clas- Numbers of Training Samples: Table IX presents an analysis of
sification provided the best performance among the testing the sensitivity of different algorithms using different training
algorithms. samples. The OA and kappa of different algorithms using dif-
To summarize, the CRF-based algorithms improve the visual ferent numbers of training samples were calculated. Because
performance of classification results by preserving the details the testing of datasets is time consuming due to their large
of the ice boundary. In terms of OA and kappa, the highest sizes, we only took two regions A and B for sensitivity analysis
accuracies in two small-scale regions are achieved by the SVM- in different numbers of training samples. With a limited num-
CRF algorithm. By visual inspection of small-scale scenes, the ber of training samples, OA and kappa of REG-CRF shows its
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

ZHU et al.: ANTARCTIC SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION BASED ON CONDITIONAL RANDOM FIELDS 15

Fig. 15. Sea-ice classification results in Region E. For the color codes of the sea surface categories, see Table I. (a) FEA-SVM. (b) STA-CRF. (c) REG-CRF. (d)
FEA-CRF. (e) SVM-CRF.

TABLE VII
REGION E SEA-ICE CLASSIFICATION ACCURACY

Algorithm Class TI/% SFY/% OI/% OA/% Kappa

FEA-SVM TI 94.85 4.95 0.20 91.04 0.870

SFY 3.27 96.72 0.01
OI 1.56 27.42 71.02
STA-CRF TI 94.97 4.92 0.11 91.32 0.875
SFY 6.44 93.56 0.00
OI 2.01 17.89 80.10
REG-CRF TI 95.48 4.03 0.49 92.88 0.889
SFY 5.67 94.33 0.00
OI 7.06 12.31 80.63
FEA-CRF TI 94.34 5.41 0.25 92.30 0.872
SFY 4.18 95.82 0.00
OI 2.22 23.36 74.42
SVM-CRF TI 95.71 4.27 0.02 94.54 0.905
SFY 4.66 95.34 0.00
OI 1.98 12.94 85.08

Surface class acronyms see Table I.

TABLE VIII
COMPUTATION TIMES (IN HOURS) FOR DIFFERENT METHODS

Method Region A Region B Region C Region D Region E

FEA-SVM 3.2(1.2) 2.6(0.8) 3.1(1.1) 1.5(0.7) 2.0(0.6)

STA-CRF 2.0 1.3 2.0 1.0 1.0
REG-CRF 1.7 1.1 1.8 1.1 1.2
FEA-CRF 4.0(2.0) 3.2(1.4) 4.1(2.1) 2.0(1.2) 3.1(1.7)
SVM-CRF 5.5(2.3) 4.4(1.8) 5.4(2.3) 3.0(1.5) 4.0(2.0)

TABLE IX
OA(%) AND KAPPA OF DIFFERENT NUMBERS OF TRAINING SAMPLES BY Fig. 16. Accuracy of FEA-SVM, STA-CRF, REG-CRF, FEA-CRF, and SVM-
DIFFERENT METHODS FOR REGIONS A AND B CRF algorithms by OA and kappa coefficient. (a) OA. (b) Kappa coefficient.

Labeled samples per class

potential in sea-ice classification compared to FEA-SVM. Us-
Region Method 3 5 10 15 ing different numbers of training samples, STA-CRF shows the
A FEA-SVM 66.15 (0.584) 78.03 (0.667) 88.57 (0.855) 91.45 (0.894)
lowest accuracy among the five algorithms in Regions A and B.
STA-CRF 63.57 (0.531) 71.83 (0.606) 82.58 (0.796) 88.08 (0.852) However, the SVM-CRF shows the highest OA and kappa using
REG-CRF 72.87 (0.618) 80.46 (0.715) 85.03 (0.821) 85.19 (0.828) different numbers of training samples. The proposed SVM-CRF
FEA-CRF 71.87 (0.607) 81.25 (0.720) 86.66 (0.838) 89.24 (0.868)
SVM-CRF 75.83 (0.623) 82.26 (0.729) 90.54 (0.872) 92.61 (0.912)
method demonstrates superior performance compared with the
B FEA-SVM 74.61 (0.633) 81.04 (0.711) 85.75 (0.783) 92.32 (0.905) other four approaches, indicating robust performance.
STA-CRF 70.45 (0.625) 81.47 (0.804) 87.64 (0.8235) 89.98 (0.861)
REG-CRF 77.48 (0.722) 83.47 (0.818) 89.71 (0.8427) 91.27 (0.903)
FEA-CRF 73.9 (0.697) 80.12 (0.768) 83.26 (0.793) 88.47 (0.852) V. CONCLUSION
SVM-CRF 78.54 (0.737) 85.47 (0.831) 91.54 (0.8776) 93.73 (0.910)
We investigated the RADARSAT-2 signatures for sea-ice-
type classification on the dual-polarization SAR imagery issued
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
16 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING
during the R/V Xuelong trapping event. We propose using the
CRF-based algorithms for providing sea-ice classification maps.
The performance was assessed by comparing results with those
of state-of-the-art algorithms on large-scale scenes with medium
resolution and on small-scale scenes with high resolution. The
evaluation results from both scales are consistent. The CRF-
based algorithms, including STA-CRF, REG-CRF, FEA-CRF,
and SVM-CRF, are given and compared with the FEA-SVM
algorithm. Although multiple features are useful for improv-
ing sea-ice classification results, only the algorithm SVM-CRF
provides the best performance in terms of visual inspection and
accuracy. Compared with FEA-CRF, the category prior intro-
duced into SVM-CRF demonstrates its efficacy in correcting
the misclassified pixels. We found that the SVM-CRF algo-
rithms can greatly improve the classification results by integrat-
ing category prior from the improved SVM classification into
the CRF models. The proposed algorithm performs well in dis-
criminating between the TI and OW, which is difficult because
the high penetration of the radar reduces their contrast. Sea-ice
conditions during the spring–summer transition highlights the
difficulty of sea-ice classification associated with the high vari-
ability in backscatter. Among the four CRF-based strategies,
the SVM-CRF approach performs the best and gives spatially
and temporally consistent results when compared to the visual
interpretation of the different SAR scenes. Snow cover and ab-
lation backscatter characteristics during sea-ice growth were
not investigated in this study. However, as snow thickness is an
important parameter for modifying sea-ice backscatter charac-
teristics, the influence of snow on sea ice as it affects backscatter
needs to be investigated in future studies by extending the tem-
poral series analysis on SAR scenes. This future research will
also contribute to improve our understanding of sea-ice growth
processes, which may benefit accurate prediction of sea-ice dis-
tribution and extent combined with remote sensing, meteoro-
logical, and climate data.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Polar Research Institute of
China and Chinese National Arctic and Antarctic Data Center
for providing the RADARSAT-2 images and temperature data.
They would also like to thank the associate editor and six anony-
mous reviewers for the constructive comments and suggestions
on the revision of this paper.
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Tingting Zhu received the B.S. degree in survey-
ing and mapping from Nanjing Normal University,
Nanjing, China, in 2012, and the M.S. degree in sur-
veying and mapping from the State Key Laboratory
of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping,
and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS), Wuhan Univer-
sity, Wuhan, China, in 2014. She is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree at LIESMARS.
Her research interests include the polar remote
sensing and change detection.
Fei Li received the B.S. degree from the Univer-
sity of Science and Technology of China, Hefei,
China, in 1982, and the Ph.D. degree from the Insti-
tute of Geodesy and Geophysics of Chinese Sciences
Academy, Wuhan, China, in 1992.
He is currently the Director of the Chinese Antarc-
tic Research Center of Surveying and Mapping,
Wuhan University, Wuhan. He is also the Vice Pres-
ident of Wuhan University. His research interests in-
clude the polar remote sensing, geodesy and geo-
physics in polar research, geophysical inversion in
lunar gravity and internal structure.
Georg Heygster (M’00) received the Diploma degree
in solid-state physics and the Ph.D. degree in digital
image processing from the University of Göttingen,
Göttingen, Germany, in 1976 and 1979, respectively.
From 1979 to 1988, he was a Consultant with
the Computer Center, University of Bremen, Bremen,
Germany. Since then, after working for one year on
the imaging mechanisms of scanning acoustic mi-
croscope, he has been the Head of the Geophysi-
cal Analysis of Satellite Images Group, Institute of
Environmental Physics, University of Bremen. His
research activities include passive and active microwave remote sensing, partic-
ularly both surface and atmospheric parameters in high latitudes, various aspects
of the hydrological cycle, long-term trends, and retrieval techniques. He was
or has been the Principal Investigator or Co-investigator of numerous research
projects funded by the European Union, the European Space Agency, the Ger-
man Research Foundation, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. These
projects include the development of sensor software and hardware, conducting
campaigns, the final data analysis from single- and multisensor data to geophys-
ical parameters, and the interpretation and application of these results in various
areas such as meteorology, climatology, and oceanography.
Shengkai Zhang received the B.S. degree from the
Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Map-
ping, Wuhan, China, in 1998, and the Ph.D. degree in
geodesy from Wuhan University, Wuhan, in 2006.
Since then, he was with the Chinese Antarctic
Center of Surveying and Mapping, Wuhan Univer-
sity.
He is currently an Associate Professor at the Chi-
nese Antarctic Center of Surveying and Mapping,
Wuhan University. His research interests include the
polar geodesy and remote sensing.