Fuzzy fusion techniques for linear features detection in multitemporal SAR images

This paper is concerned with the automatic detection of linear features in SAR satellite data, with application to road network extraction. After a directional prefiltering step, a morphological line detector is presented. To improve the detection performances, the results obtained on multitemporal data are fused. Different fusion strategies involving different fusion operators are then presented. Since extensions of classical set union and intersection do not lead to satisfactory results (the corresponding operators are either too indulgent or too severe), the first strategy consists of fusing the data using a compromise operator. The second strategy consists of fusing the results computed with two operators that have opposite properties, in order to obtain a final intermediate result. Thanks to the wide range of properties they provide, fuzzy operators are used to test and compare these two fusion strategies on real ERS-1 multitemporal data.