A wavelet transform coder supporting browsing and transmission of sea ice SAR imagery

A wavelet-transform-based algorithm for sea ice synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image data compression is presented. Compression of the relatively low resolution (100 m) SAR data is necessary to enable the transmission of such images from the Finnish Ice Service to users in the Baltic Sea. On board the ships, the SAR images are used for navigation purposes. Hence, in the visual appearance of the compressed image, special attention must be paid to the sharpness of small details. Several target-dependent features are incorporated in the compression scheme developed. The addition of these features was motivated by an examination of the wavelet coefficient statistics for the SAR data. In the quantization phase, the sensitivity characteristics of the human visual system were taken into account. As a result, the proposed algorithm deviates in several respects from the standard procedures used in wavelet-based compression. The algorithm requires the setting up of multiple user-defined parameters to satisfy the requirements of the users and data. This requires supervision of an expert, but also makes it flexible for many kinds of data and user requirements. The algorithm presented gives satisfactory results with a compression ratio of 20:1. Since only the location of ice-covered areas is of significance for ship traffic, the algorithm introduced contains an option to mask off open sea areas with the aid of an automatic open-water detection procedure. We also report the results of a user evaluation, in which the proposed algorithm is compared to the algorithm currently used by the Finnish Ice Service, as well as to the JPEG standard. The results of the evaluation favor the use of the proposed algorithm.