Deepcloud - A Fully Convolutionnal Neural Network for Cloud and Shadow Masking in Optical Satellite Images

Many cloud and shadow detection methods have been proposed already, but improvements can be made on accuracy or automation. In this study, we propose a Fully Convolutional Network model for the detection of clouds and shadows in optical satellite images. The proposed model was trained on 165 Landsat images in Finland, and tested on an independent set of images. The cloud and shadow detection accuracy reached 95%, outperforming both quantitatively and qualitatively a selection of other deep learning architectures.