Maximum A Posteriori -based automatic target detection in SAR images

The paper presents an algorithm of automatic target detection in Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) images based on Maximum A Posteriori(MAP). The algorithm is divided into three steps. First, it employs Gaussian mixture distribution to approximate and estimate multi-modal histogram of SAR image. Then, based on the principle of MAP, when a priori probability is both unknown and learned respectively, the sample pixels are classified into different classes c = {target, shadow, background}. Last, it compares the results of two different target detections. Simulation results preferably indicate that the presented algorithm is fast and robust, with the learned a priori probability, an approach to target detection is reliable and promising. Communication author: Wang Yimin, born in 1968, male, Ph.D. candidate. College of Automation, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China.