MIXTURE DESCRIPTION OF POLARIMETRIC SAR IMAGES AND IMPROVED NONLOCAL SPECKLE FILTERING

We introduce a polarimetric SAR speckle filter by combining finite mixture distributions and the so-called non-local filtering scheme. The finite mixture distributions are used to describe the statistical properties of the highly textured, heterogeneous scene in high-resolution SAR images. The non-local filtering scheme is used to test similarity in the local patterns to include sufficient pixels for better speckle reduction. The filter is capable of retaining distinctive scattering mechanisms from the onset. The improvement is demonstrated using DLR's high-resolution F-SAR images.