Matching suitable feature construction for SAR images based on evolutionary synthesis strategy

In the paper, a set of algorithms to construct synthetic aperture radar (SAR) matching suitable features are firstly proposed based on the evolutionary synthesis strategy. During the process, on the one hand, the indexes of primary matching suitable features (PMSFs) are designed based on the characteristics of image texture, SAR imaging and SAR matching algorithm, which is a process involving expertise; on the other hand, by designing a synthesized operation expression tree based on PMSFs, a much more flexible expression form of synthesized features is built, which greatly expands the construction space. Then, the genetic algorithm-based optimized searching process is employed to search the synthesized matching suitable feature (SMSF) with the highest efficiency, largely improving the optimized searching efficiency. In addition, the experimental results of the airborne synthetic aperture radar ortho-images of C-band and P-band show that the SMSFs gained via the algorithms can reflect the matching suitability of SAR images accurately and the matching probabilities of selected matching suitable areas of ortho-images could reach 99 +/- 0.5%. (C) 2013 Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of CSAA & BUAA.