Automatic ship detection in SAR satellite images: Performance assessment

This paper presents the benchmarking of four ship detection systems based on satellite borne Synthetic Aperture Radar data. This research, carried out within the framework of the FP7 NEREIDS project, provides a detailed performance assessment of the four detectors, not only in terms of detection accuracy, but also showing how they can cope with challenging situations typical of the maritime environment. Despite the good results, the conclusions are that none of the detection systems behave well in all of the conditions. Nevertheless, merging all the different ship detection reports would increase the performances.