A Novel Framework Based on Polarimetric Change Vectors for Unsupervised Multiclass Change Detection in Dual-Pol Intensity SAR Images

Change detection (CD) is a crucial topic in many remote sensing applications. In the recent years, satellite polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) systems (e.g., the Sentinel-1 constellation) became a suitable tool for multitemporal monitoring due to the regular acquisitions with a short revisit time in different polarimetric channels. Methods for CD in PolSAR data mainly focus on binary CD (i.e., they provide information about the presence/absence of change only), whereas the polarimetric enhanced information provides multiple features that can be exploited for performing multiclass CD. In this article, we introduce a novel framework for the characterization of multitemporal changes in dual-polarimetric data. The framework is based on the definition of polarimetric change vectors (PCVs) and their representation in a polar coordinate system. PCVs allow characterizing and, thus, to separate multiclass changes in terms of target properties of the single-time scenes and the scattering theory. The proposed model is used to: 1) derive the statistical behaviors of change and no change classes in PolSAR multitemporal images; 2) design an automatic and unsupervised strategy to estimate the optimal number of changes; and 3) distinguish no change from change classes and the kinds of change from each other. An experimental analysis has been conducted on three multitemporal PolSAR data sets having different complexities in terms of number and kinds of change classes. The results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach and the better performance with respect to both specific techniques for CD in dual-pol SAR data and a general multiclass CD method, not designed for PolSAR data.