SAR image segmentation via improving watershed algorithm with histogram enhancement

Abstract

Since the details in quasi-homogeneous region will be degraded from a conventional global image enhancement methods such as histogram equalization. This degradation causes from the saturation of the gray levels in equalization process. Then the local histogram equalization for each quasi-homogeneous region will be used in order to improve the details in the regions. To obtain the quasi-homogeneous regions, the image can be segmented by using a watershed transform. The watershed transform is based on mathematical morphology; therefore, the segmented regions can be effectively separated meaningful. Two adjacent regions in images, which almost similar in gray levels can be separted by the watershed transform. In the color image enhancement, three spectral bands are enhanced independently. Then all the three bands are assigned to each processed image in order to produce a color composite image. By the proposed algorithm, the result images show the better perception on image details. Therefore, the high efficiency of image classification can be obtained by using this color image.