Perceptual grouping for building recognition from satellite SAR image stacks

Modern high resolution satellite SAR sensors even allow analysis of building sub-structures like windows and balconies. In the amplitude data man-made objects usually appear either as salient bright lines or points embedded within dark background. The latter features may coincide also with so-called persistent scatterers (PS), whose phase history is exploited by time series analysis for 3D reconstruction and deformation monitoring. We apply principles of human gestalt perception for grouping urban objects such as entire facades. The analysis takes place both in the amplitude and the phase data. Fusion is possible at different levels, e.g: i) grouping results in one domain may focus search in the other domain, ii) both approaches allow to infer independently the 3D structure by exploiting complementary features (amplitude vs. phase), and iii) grouping as such is useful to introduce model knowledge.