Classification of the PolSAR Data Using Dual Classifiers

Classification of the polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) data is an important facet of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image interpretation. In general, many polarimetric features can be extracted from PolSAR data. However, not all features are benefit for classification and too many polarimetric features result in the low classification efficiency. We introduce a method to deal with many polarimetric features and obtain both high classification accuracy and high classification efficiency. We first preprocess the PolSAR data to obtain objects, i.e., homogeneous regions. Next, we apply polarimetric feature processing to compute various polarimetric features of the PolSAR data. Based on the classification of the sample information, we then select the prominent polarimetric features using the data mining attributes of decision tree algorithm (DTA). Finally, we obtain classification results through the selected polarimetric features by DTA, the sample data and support vector machine (SVM). We verified the proposed method using the AirSAR L-Band PolSAR data. Our experiments indicate that the classification accuracy of the proposed method is equivalent to that of SVM and the computational efficiency is comparable to that of DTA. Thus, the proposed method integrates the advantages of both DTA and SVM.