Quantum Processing in Fusion of SAR and Optical Images for Deep Learning: A Data-Centric Approach

Deep learning techniques are very prominent in processing remotely sensed synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images for real-time, high-impact applications, such as image classification, object detection, and semantic segmentation. The accuracy of deep learning models, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), depends on the quality of the input data. Compared to the model-centric approach, where the model parameters are optimized during training, the data-centric approach can enhance the performance accuracy as data quality is improved before training the models. Improving the data quality of SAR images is challenging as SAR image properties are different from optical images. Image fusion techniques proved to enhance the quality of SAR images when combined with optical images. Many fusion techniques exist for combining SAR and optical images in the classical domain. This paper proposes a novel approach to using quantum computing for the image fusion of SAR and optical images. Eight different quantum techniques are used to process and fuse the images. We designed and created a dataset for land-use classification by collecting data using the Google Earth Engine. The quality metric measurements show that the quality of SAR images has improved by using the proposed quantum processing techniques. In addition, performance evaluation of the deep learning CNNs on the dataset was carried out for all quantum processing techniques. Our approach improved the classification accuracy from 82.64%, with only SAR images for training, to 95.36% using the proposed image fusion techniques.