A ship detection system for RADARSAT-2 dual-pol multi-look imagery implemented in the ADSS

Abstract

A ship detection system for use with RADARSAT-2 dual-polarisation multi-look imagery is described. The system is built using the Defence Science & Technology Organisation's (DSTO) automated target detection software system known as the Analysts' Detection Support System (ADSS). The ADSS is flexible and allows the combination of many different modules in parallel as well as sequential pipelines. This paper discusses a particular system implemented in the ADSS to detect ships in RADARSAT-2 ScanSAR Narrow dual-polarisation imagery. The imagery has been well ground-truthed and detection performance is presented in the form of ROC curves. A particular aspect of the problem that is considered in detail is how best to combine the HH and HV polarisation channels in the pre-screening stage.