Separating ice-water composites and computing floe size distributions

Describes an image processing technique that separates ice-water composites and determines the floe size distribution and concentration from SAR polar imagery. At marginal ice zones (MIZs), ice dynamics are active, providing important information for climatic indications and polar navigation. Hence, the identification of the ice-water composites and floe size distribution in these areas is of importance to geophysicists and polar navigator. The authors have designed a multi-phase technique that combines Gaussian approximation, Laplacian measurement and structural modeling to obtain ice-water segmentation and floe extraction. With this technique they compute floe size distribution, ice-water composites, and coverage statistics. They have successfully tested their technique on a database of SAR MIZ imagery and established floe distribution and ice coverage maps for the corresponding areas.