Bayesian fusion of multi-scale detectors for road extraction from SAR images

Abstract

This paper introduces an innovative road network extraction algorithm using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery for improving the accuracy of road extraction. The state-of-the-art approaches, such as fraction extraction and road network optimization, failed to obtain continuous road segments in separate successions, since the optimization could not change the parts ignored by the fraction extraction. In this paper, the proposed algorithm integrates the fraction extraction and optimization procedure simultaneously to extract the road network: (1) the Bayesian framework is utilized to transfer the road network extraction to joint reasoning of the likelihood of fraction extraction and the priority of network optimization; (2) the multi-scale linear feature detector (MLFD) and the network optimization beamlet are introduced; (3) the conditional random field (CRF) is used to reason jointly. The result is the global optimum since the fraction extraction and network optimization are exploited at the same time. The proposed algorithm solves the problem that the fractions are bound to reduce in the process of network optimization and has demonstrated effectiveness in real SAR images applications.