Calculation of the Ocean Contrast from Synthetic Aperture Radar Images

About this technology

Overview

In remote sensing of the ocean, contrast in the measured intensity between clean water and other features is used to identify different objects on the ocean surface either directly or indirectly via alteration of the ocean wave spectrum. The damping ratio, a measure of contrast, is increasingly used for operational oil spill monitoring as an aid or alternative to visual inspections by trained personnel, and can in some cases identify thicker oil in a slick. This software implements an algorithm that has been proposed for automatically calculating the contrast based upon the statistical properties of the measured intensity signals from the ocean surface, and shown to work well even for complex slick geometries. It works with multi-frequency and medium-to-high resolution data. The algorithm's flexibility and computational simplicity makes it suitable for real-time processing to support oil spill response.