Automatic detecting system for ship wakes in SAR images

An automatic system based on localized Radon transform was proposed for detecting ship wakes in SAR images. Ship pixels in SAR image were masked out during pre-process in order to eliminate their own disturbance. Then localized Radon transform windows around ship targets were selected. At last, normalized line integrals were calculated within the localized Radon transform windows and the extremum in Radon transform space was the corresponding ship wake coordinates. This automatic system can detect ship wakes in SAR images accurately and quickly. So, the algorithm efficiency is very high.