A Novel Method of Visualization for SAR Images

Visual interpretation of SAR images plays a critical role in remote sensing applications. For obtaining the image suitable for human observation, a new method of visualization for SAR images is proposed in this paper. The proposed algorithm takes a negative exponential transformation on the original SAR image. The parameter of the transformation can be computed rapidly based on the characteristic statistics of the SAR images. Using several areas of a NASA/JPL AIRSAR images, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by comparing with two commonly used algorithms.