Brief Communication: Contrast-stretching- and histogram-smoothness-based synthetic aperture radar image enhancement for flood map generation

Abstract. Synthetic-aperture-radar-image-based flood map generation is usually a challenging task (due to degraded contrast). A three-step approach (based on adaptive histogram clipping, histogram remapping and smoothing) is proposed for generation of a more visualized flood map image. The pre- and post-flood images are adaptively histogram equalized. The hidden details in difference image are enhanced using contrast-based enhancement and histogram smoothing. A fast-ready flood map is then generated using equalized pre-, post- and difference images. Results (evaluated using different data sets) show significance of the proposed technique.