Road extraction from high-resolution airborne SAR using operator fusion

Extraction of roads from high-resolution airborne X-band SAR data is described. The method employs identification of regions of interest, followed by fusion of basic road feature detectors and is complemented by a higher level road model. Identification of regions of interest employs a significance test for the local coefficient of variation. In regions of interest a road feature detector provides a road score through fusion of functions for road edge presence and road center continuity. Finally, an active contour model which is optimized by a genetic algorithm is applied to the fused image