Shape-constraint for accurate segmentation in remote sensing imagery

A new approach is proposed for the segmentation of remote sensing images which is based on using a prior shape information. This information is obtained from a set of signed distance functions (SDF). Each SDF represents the training data set as a histogram of the occurrences of the data points inside and outside a specific object. A statistical approach is proposed for modeling each SDF, which is considered to have a random distribution. The mean field theory-based support vector machines (MF-based SVM) density estimator is used to estimate the probability density function which underlies the random distribution of the SDF. The statistical modeling of shapes enables realistic representation of objects especially those which are not contiguous within the image; i.e., objects which consist of multiple regions. This modeling is used to substitute for the class priors in a Bayes segmentation setup, in which the class conditional probabilities are estimated using the MF-based SVM algorithm also. Experiments with multispectral remote sensing data show that the proposed segmentation approach is more accurate and robust than other known alternatives.