Improved multilook technique applied to SAR images

The multilook technique used in synthetic aperture radar image formation consists in adding incoherently M looks. As these looks can be obtained in their complex form and are correlated, the phase and correlation informations should be taken into account in the speckle reduction process. In this paper, we propose an improved multilook technique based on the use of these two informations. We apply it on SAR images displaying ship wakes. Our technique consists in enhancing a specific texture in the image, using a set of filters matched to it, while simultaneously reducing speckle. The filters are applied on each look, and the resulting images are projected onto a particular basis. The final image is constituted by the quadratic sum of the processed looks, after their projection on the same geographic plane. Illustrative results as images comparison and analysis will show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.