An Adaptive and Iterative Method of Urban Area Extraction From SAR Images

This letter presents a new method for unsupervised urban area extraction from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images based on the ffmax algorithm proposed by C. Gouinaud specially for acquiring urban areas in SPOT imagery. According to the statistical characteristics of urban areas, an adaptive and iterative method based on the low-level extraction given by the ffmax algorithm using a large window is proposed. Experimental results on real SAR images show that the proposed automatic method works quickly and can preserve the borders of urban areas as well as avoid the disturbance of other classes and the extractions of urban areas are reliable and precise