Keywords

geophysical signal processing, image classification, oceanographic techniques, radar signal processing, radiometry, remote sensing, remote sensing by radar, sea ice, water, sensor fusion

Abstract

Characterizing the variability in sea ice in the polar regions is fundamental to an understanding of global climate and the geophysical processes governing climate changes. Sea ice can be grouped into a number of general classes with different characteristics. Multisensor data from NSCAT, ERS-2, and SSM/I are reconstructed into enhanced resolution imagery for use in ice-type classification. The resulting twelve-dimensional data set is linearly transformed through principal component analysis to reduce data dimensionality and noise levels. An iterative statistical data segmentation algorithm is developed using maximum likelihood (ML) and maximum a posteriori (MAP) techniques. For a given ice type, the conditional probability distributions of observed vectors are assumed to be Gaussian. The cluster centroids, covariance matrices, and a priori distributions are estimated from the classification of a previous temporal image set. An initial classification is produced using centroid training data and a weighted nearest-neighbor classifier. Though validation is limited, the algorithm results in an ice classification that is judged to be superior to a conventional k-means approach.

Original Publication Citation

Remund, Q. P., D. G. Long, and M. R. Drinkwater. "An Iterative Approach to Multisensor Sea Ice Classification." Geoscience and Remote Sensing, IEEE Transactions on 38.4 (2): 1843-56

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2000-07-01

Permanent URL

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/1018

Publisher

IEEE

Language

English

College

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

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