%0 Journal Article %A Ponomarenko, N. N. %A Abramov, S. K. %A Zelensky, A. A. %D 2002 %I Begell House %N 5&6 %P 22 %R 10.1615/TelecomRadEng.v58.i5-6.50 %T Automatic Robust Procedure for Radar Image Preliminary Analysis and Filtering %U https://www.dl.begellhouse.com/journals/0632a9d54950b268,037c14ee72407d20,7c19a68b389d4f9f.html %V 58 %X Quite typical is a situation when it is desirable to process some radar images for which their origin and/or imaging system parameters (operation mode) are unknown and, thus, a priori information about noise characteristics is limited. Then, evaluating these characteristics, for example, estimating multiplicative noise variance is a complicated and time consuming task that commonly requires high skill of the user. To perform both tasks efficiently an automatic robust procedure for SAR and SLAR image preliminary analysis and filtering is proposed and considered. The basic stages of this procedure are the following: a) blind evaluation of multiplicative noise relative variance for the original radar image, b) its pre-processing using the local statistic Lee filter, c) blind evaluation of the residual noise relative variance for the obtained pre-processed image, d) post-filtering. The proposed procedure provides appropriately accurate estimations of noise characteristics. The influence of variance estimation errors on filter performance is analyzed. The effectiveness of the analysis/filtering procedure is confirmed quantitatively for simulated images and demonstrated for real life radar images. %8 2004-04-19