{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T04:39:28Z","timestamp":1760243968265,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":12,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2009,2,3]],"date-time":"2009-02-03T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1233619200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Segmentation of high noise imagery like Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images is still one of the most challenging tasks in image processing. While level set, a novel approach based on the analysis of the motion of an interface, can be used to address this challenge, the cell-based iterations may make the process of image segmentation remarkably slow, especially for large-size images. For this reason fast level set algorithms such as narrow band and fast marching have been attempted. Built upon these, this paper presents an improved fast level set method for SAR ocean image segmentation. This competent method is dependent on both the intensity driven speed and curvature flow that result in a stable and smooth boundary. Notably, it is optimized to track moving interfaces for keeping up with the point-wise boundary propagation using a single list and a method of fast up-wind scheme iteration. The list facilitates efficient insertion and deletion of pixels on the propagation front. Meanwhile, the local up-wind scheme is used to update the motion of the curvature front instead of solving partial differential equations. Experiments have been carried out on extraction of surface slick features from ERS-2 SAR images to substantiate the efficacy of the proposed fast level set method.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s90200814","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2009,2,4]],"date-time":"2009-02-04T03:03:04Z","timestamp":1233716584000},"page":"814-829","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":15,"title":["A Fast Level Set Method for Synthetic Aperture Radar Ocean Image Segmentation"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"9","author":[{"given":"Xiaoxia","family":"Huang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Bo","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Hongga","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2009,2,3]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"157","DOI":"10.1109\/TPAMI.1982.4767223","article-title":"A model for radar images and its application to adaptive digital filtering of multiplicative noise","volume":"4","author":"Frost","year":"1982","journal-title":"IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"636","DOI":"10.1117\/12.7973877","article-title":"Speckle suppression and analysis for synthetic aperture radar images","volume":"25","author":"Lee","year":"1986","journal-title":"Optical Engineering"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"629","DOI":"10.1109\/TGRS.1987.289842","article-title":"SAR data filtering for classification","volume":"25","author":"Durand","year":"1987","journal-title":"IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"711","DOI":"10.1080\/0143116021000013322","article-title":"Comparison of radar image segmentation by Gaussian- and Gamma-Markov random field models","volume":"24","author":"Dong","year":"2003","journal-title":"International Journal of Remote Sensing"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2404","DOI":"10.1109\/TGRS.2003.817844","article-title":"Almost translation invariant wavelet transformations for speckle reduction of SAR images","volume":"41","author":"Sveinsson","year":"2003","journal-title":"IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing"},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1773","DOI":"10.1109\/TGRS.2003.813488","article-title":"SAR image denoising via Bayesian wavelet shrinkage based on heavy-tailed modeling","volume":"1","author":"Achim","year":"2003","journal-title":"IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing"},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1145","DOI":"10.1080\/01431160512331326747","article-title":"A level set approach to segmentation of oil slicks in SAR images","volume":"26","author":"Huang","year":"2005","journal-title":"International Journal of Remote Sensing"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"12","DOI":"10.1016\/0021-9991(88)90002-2","article-title":"Fronts propogating with curvature-dependent speed: algorithms based on Hamilton-Jacobi formulations","volume":"79","author":"Osher","year":"1988","journal-title":"Journal of Computational Physics"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"158","DOI":"10.1109\/34.368173","article-title":"Shape modeling with front propagation: a level set approach","volume":"17","author":"Malladi","year":"1995","journal-title":"IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence"},{"key":"ref_10","unstructured":"Sethian, J.A. (1999). Computational Geometry, Fluid Mechanics, Computer Vision and Materials Science, Cambridge University Press."},{"key":"ref_11","unstructured":"Shi, Y.G., and Clem Karl, W. (2005). A fast implementation of the level set method without solving partial differential equations, Technical Report ECE-2005-02, ECE Department, Boston University."},{"key":"ref_12","unstructured":"Whitaker, R.T., and Xue, X.W. Variable-conductance, level-set curvature for image denoising. Thessalonika, Greece."}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/9\/2\/814\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T22:09:47Z","timestamp":1760220587000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/9\/2\/814"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2009,2,3]]},"references-count":12,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2009,2]]}},"alternative-id":["s90200814"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s90200814","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"1424-8220"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2009,2,3]]}}}