Surface Water Body Detection in High-Resolution TerraSAR-X Data using Active Contour Models

Abstract

This paper presents the application of two different active contour models for the segmentation of high-resolution TerraSAR-X data. Both methods facilitate the detection of land-water-boundaries in semi-automated procedures and can be used to delineate flood extent and to map open water surfaces in general. For the extraction of smooth water bodies amplitude thresholding approaches are quite common and often applied. For rough water bodies however the application of amplitude thresholding methods is not successful. This paper demonstrates the poten-tials and limitations of active contour models for mapping both smooth and rough water bodies in high-resolution SAR data. Examples of both different segmentation methods are presented.