Speckle reduction of Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery using the Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transform

Inhalt:
Wavelet theory is a current trend in digital image processing, used for various applications including fusion and denoising. The dual tree complex wavelet transform (DT-CWT) proposed by Nick Kingsbury is a multiresolution environment method which compensates the major drawbacks of conventional wavelet methods. A new speckle removal algorithm based on the DT-CWT is proposed, implemented on ENVISAT imagery and compared to standard speckle removal methods for evaluation purposes. The evaluation showed that the DT-CWT speckle removal method provides accurate results at local and global level, removing speckle noise effectively and with minor spectral distortions and blurring effects.