Change Detection in Time Series of High Resolution SAR Satellite Images

In the last few years, change detection based on remote sensing data has become a highly frequented field of research with multiple applications for practical use. To detect changes between temporarily different satellite images is of interest for example in terms of urban monitoring and disaster management. The approach presented in this paper allows the fully automatic detection of small-scaled changes (e. g. vehicles or construction sites) in time series of SAR amplitude image data. To create a robust method, only one single parameter encoding the size of the detected changes has to be set by the operator. Furthermore, first steps concerning the categorization of the detected changes are presented. As dataset, a time series of high resolution SAR images acquired by the German satellite TerraSAR-X was used. The time span of this time series, acquired in ascending and descending orbit, is about half a year.