A Bayesian Joint Decorrelation and Despeckling of SAR Imagery

Despeckling of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a known research challenge. A novel solution to this problem has been developed and evaluated via an iterative maximum a posterior estimation incorporating a Bayesian joint decorrelation and despeckling based on a correlation model. This model realistically explores the physical correlation process of SAR speckle noise and is determined automatically via Bayesian estimation in the log-Fourier domain. A patchwise computation is used to account for the spatial nonstationarity associated with SAR image data. The proposed approach is compared to the existing despeckling techniques using both simulated and real SAR data, and the experimental results demonstrate the improvement in preserving the structural details while suppressing speckle noise.