ALOS-PALSAR polarimetric SAR data to observe sea oil slicks

In this study an electromagnetic approach is proposed for exploiting polarimetric information for sea oil slick observation in L-band ALOS PALSAR full polarimetric SAR data. The problem is tackled form an electromagnetic viewpoint by describing the sea surface scattering mechanism with and without oil slicks. Following this rationale, a filtering technique, based on the Mueller scattering matrix, is applied to detect oil slicks in full polarimetric SAR data. Successively, the filtering results are verified by the analysis of the slick-free and slick-covered pedestal height and polarimetric entropy (H). Experiments, accomplished on a meaningful set of Level 1.1 L-Band ALOS PALSAR full polarimetric data, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.