A novel approach for edge detection of low contrast satellite images

Abstract

Discrimination between texture edges and geometrical edges is very difficult in low contrast images. Satellite images are low contrast images. It is important to extract the edges that are not clearly visible in case of Satellite images. The present work encompasses a new edge detection algorithm using newly constructed differentiator. Chebyshev polynomial based fractional order differentiator has been used for filtering operation on an image. High pass and Low pass filters are designed with the concept of Quadrature Mirror Filter (QMF). Pre-processing has been performed by using this filter. Sobel edge detection method has been applied on this pre-processed image. The algorithm has been tested with two different satellite images.