BSG-WSL: BackScatter-guided weakly supervised learning for water mapping in SAR images
Extracting and analyzing water resources in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images is crucial for flood management and environmental resource planning due to the ability to monitor ground all-weather and all-time. However, extracting water entirely from high-resolution SAR images in diverse scenarios...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2025-02-01
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| Series: | International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation |
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| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843225000329 |
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| author | Kai Wang Zhongle Ren Biao Hou Weibin Li Licheng Jiao |
| author_facet | Kai Wang Zhongle Ren Biao Hou Weibin Li Licheng Jiao |
| author_sort | Kai Wang |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Extracting and analyzing water resources in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images is crucial for flood management and environmental resource planning due to the ability to monitor ground all-weather and all-time. However, extracting water entirely from high-resolution SAR images in diverse scenarios is challenging due to variable water shapes, many low-intensity land covers similar to water, and scarce labels. In this article, a BackScatter-Guided Weakly Supervised Learning (BSG-WSL) framework based on image-level labels is proposed for water extraction with the requirement of high generalization and low labeling. In BSG-WSL, a BackScatter-Guided Network (BSGNet) is proposed, where the backscatter information of water is used to guide the feature extraction process, yielding precise Class Attention Maps (CAMs) of water. Then, a morphological pseudo-label optimization algorithm is designed to employ CAMs to generate high-quality pseudo-labels. Finally, a confidence cross-entropy loss is introduced to utilize pseudo-labels to train the extraction model and achieve precise water extraction in different scenarios. Experiments on three datasets of SAR images from the GF-3 and Sentinel-1B satellites verify that the proposed method achieves state-of-the-art performance compared to other weakly supervised methods based on image-level annotations. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-6beaa93a7ded45b28a2bcfa3d911f0b4 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1569-8432 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-02-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation |
| spelling | doaj-art-6beaa93a7ded45b28a2bcfa3d911f0b42025-02-04T04:10:21ZengElsevierInternational Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation1569-84322025-02-01136104385BSG-WSL: BackScatter-guided weakly supervised learning for water mapping in SAR imagesKai Wang0Zhongle Ren1Biao Hou2Weibin Li3Licheng Jiao4Key Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Image Understanding, Ministry of Education of China, Xi’an, 710071, China; The Joint International Research Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Computation, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710071, ChinaCorresponding authors at: Key Laboratory of intelligent Perception and Image Understanding, Ministry of Education of China, China.; Key Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Image Understanding, Ministry of Education of China, Xi’an, 710071, China; The Joint International Research Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Computation, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710071, ChinaCorresponding authors at: Key Laboratory of intelligent Perception and Image Understanding, Ministry of Education of China, China.; Key Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Image Understanding, Ministry of Education of China, Xi’an, 710071, China; The Joint International Research Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Computation, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710071, ChinaKey Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Image Understanding, Ministry of Education of China, Xi’an, 710071, China; The Joint International Research Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Computation, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710071, ChinaKey Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Image Understanding, Ministry of Education of China, Xi’an, 710071, China; The Joint International Research Laboratory of Intelligent Perception and Computation, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710071, ChinaExtracting and analyzing water resources in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images is crucial for flood management and environmental resource planning due to the ability to monitor ground all-weather and all-time. However, extracting water entirely from high-resolution SAR images in diverse scenarios is challenging due to variable water shapes, many low-intensity land covers similar to water, and scarce labels. In this article, a BackScatter-Guided Weakly Supervised Learning (BSG-WSL) framework based on image-level labels is proposed for water extraction with the requirement of high generalization and low labeling. In BSG-WSL, a BackScatter-Guided Network (BSGNet) is proposed, where the backscatter information of water is used to guide the feature extraction process, yielding precise Class Attention Maps (CAMs) of water. Then, a morphological pseudo-label optimization algorithm is designed to employ CAMs to generate high-quality pseudo-labels. Finally, a confidence cross-entropy loss is introduced to utilize pseudo-labels to train the extraction model and achieve precise water extraction in different scenarios. Experiments on three datasets of SAR images from the GF-3 and Sentinel-1B satellites verify that the proposed method achieves state-of-the-art performance compared to other weakly supervised methods based on image-level annotations.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843225000329Synthetic aperture radarWater semantic segmentationWeakly supervised learningBackscatter information |
| spellingShingle | Kai Wang Zhongle Ren Biao Hou Weibin Li Licheng Jiao BSG-WSL: BackScatter-guided weakly supervised learning for water mapping in SAR images International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation Synthetic aperture radar Water semantic segmentation Weakly supervised learning Backscatter information |
| title | BSG-WSL: BackScatter-guided weakly supervised learning for water mapping in SAR images |
| title_full | BSG-WSL: BackScatter-guided weakly supervised learning for water mapping in SAR images |
| title_fullStr | BSG-WSL: BackScatter-guided weakly supervised learning for water mapping in SAR images |
| title_full_unstemmed | BSG-WSL: BackScatter-guided weakly supervised learning for water mapping in SAR images |
| title_short | BSG-WSL: BackScatter-guided weakly supervised learning for water mapping in SAR images |
| title_sort | bsg wsl backscatter guided weakly supervised learning for water mapping in sar images |
| topic | Synthetic aperture radar Water semantic segmentation Weakly supervised learning Backscatter information |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843225000329 |
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