Novel method for extraction of ship target with overlaps in SAR image via EM algorithm

The quality of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image degrades in the case of multiple imaging projection planes (IPPs) and multiple overlapping ship targets, and then the performance of target classification and recognition can be influenced. For addressing this issue, a method for extracting ship targets with overlaps via the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is proposed. First, the scatterers of ship targets are obtained via the target detection technique. Then, the EM algorithm is applied to extract the scatterers of a single ship target with a single IPP. Afterwards, a novel image amplitude estimation approach is proposed, with which the radar image of a single target with a single IPP can be generated. The proposed method can accomplish IPP selection and targets separation in the image domain, which can improve the image quality and reserve the target information most possibly. Results of simulated and real measured data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.