GPU-based framework for interactive visualization of SAR data

Synthetic Aperture Radar data presents specific problems for interactive visualization. The high amount of multiplicative speckle noise has to be reduced. The high dynamic range of the amplitude data must be mapped to the lower dynamic range of display devices in a way that makes image features appropriately visible. In addition to interactive navigation in the data, it is desirable to allow interactive selection of despeckling and dynamic range reduction methods and adjustment of their parameters. Graphics processing units (GPUs) can be seen as ubiquitous parallel coprocessors with extreme computational power. In this paper, we propose a GPU-based framework for interactive visualization of SAR data. Data management techniques are used to make full use of the GPU. We reworked well-known despeckling and dynamic range reduction techniques for the GPU programming model and implemented them in our framework. Both navigation in large data sets and adjustment of processing parameters are fully interactive.