An Invalid Cloud Region Masking Method for Remote Sensing Image Compression

An invalid cloud region masking method based on local edge context is proposed for the compression of remote sensing images. Through analyzing the characteristics of various compression algorithms and taking the local edge information of the cloud region into account, the decompression quality is improved. First, according to the cloud mask information, labeling the connected cloud region, second, performing region growth on the labeled mask image, then differing the two mask images to obtain the local edge context, and finally different invalid cloud regions are filled with the average of the respective local edge context pixels. Using the image testing set generated from QuickBird and OrbView images, our method's impact on six common remote sensing image compression algorithms is analyzed experimentally. The experimental results show that our masking method can improve the decompressed image quality when the compression ratio is certain. When the image quality is fixed, it can further reduce the compressed bitrate. For onboard application, our masking method can increase the onboard imaging time of the satellites, and eventually improve the onboard specifications of remote sensing satellites.