Change Detection on SAR Images by using a Parametric Estimation of the Kullback-Leibler

Divergence

Jordi Inglada
CNES, French Space Agency, DSO/OT/QTIS, bpi 811
CNES, 18, Avenue Edouard Belin, 31401 Toulouse Cedex 4, France
Tel: +33 (0)5 61 27 33 97, Fax: +33 (0)5 61 27 31 67
e-mail: jordi.inglada@cnes.fr

Abstract – This communication presents a method for
performing change detection using a pair of SAR images
acquired at different dates. The main difficulty with SAR
images is the presence of speckle noise which may produce
noisy change images if they are acquired with slightly
different angles. The technique proposed in the present
paper uses a parametric estimation of the probability
distributions locally in each image as a characterization of
the surfaces. The change is measured as a distance between
these probability laws. The dissimilarity measure between
the statistical distributions used here is a symmetric
version of the Kullback-Leibler divergence.
I. INTRODUCTION
While the detection of changes between two optical images
can easily be addressed by the use of indexes based on
differences, this task is much more difficult in radar images
because of the speckle noise. The speckle makes very difficult
to use images with even slightly different acquisition angles.
It is now accepted that the statistics of SAR images can
be well modeled by the family of probability distributions
known as the Pearson system [1]. This family of distributions
is very easy to use, since the analytical expression of the
probability density function for a given area in the image
can be obtained by computing two parameters, β1 and β2
which only depend on the four first statistical moments
of the data. Hence, the Pearson system allows for easily
finding the statistical distribution of a given set of samples (a
neighborhood).
The change detection algorithm proposed in this paper is
based on the modification of the statistics between the two
acquisition dates of each pixel’s neighborhood. A pixel will
be considered as having changed if its statistical distribution
changes from one image to the other. In order to quantify this
change, we need a measure which maps the two estimated
statistical distributions (one for each date) for each pixel
to a scalar index of change. Several approaches could be
taken, like computing the mean square error between the two
distributions, the norm of a vector of moments, etc.
expression for the statistical distributions, the computation of
the Kullback-Leibler divergence is straightforward. Results
on real data (volcanic eruption of the mount Nyiragongo,
D.R. Congo, January 2001) are shown and compared to
ground truth and other classical change detection algorithms
currently used for SAR images.
II. THE ALGORITHM
In the literature, there exist plenty of measures used for
change detection. Most of them are based on radiometry
evolutions : pixel difference or ratios. Even if the intensity
ratio between radar images could be thought as a good choice
for change detection (Touzi et al. [2] have used it for edge
detection), it doesn’t make sense when images are acquired
with different incidence angles. However, in many operational
applications of remote sensing, as for example natural hazards
management, it is difficult to use images acquired with the
same incidence angles, since the multiplicity of modes
for current SAR sensors (Radarsat, Envisat) reduce the
probability of finding an archive acquisition which fits the
first available acquisition after the event of interest.
We make the assumption that the statistical distribution
of the pixels will remain more stable than the pixel values
themselves. Thus, we use a dissimilarity measure based on
the change of pixel statistics.
A. Kullback-Leibler divergence
Let P and Q be two probability laws. The Kullback-Leibler
divergence from Q to P, in the case where these two laws
have the densities p et q, is given by :


p(x)
K(Q|P) = log p(x)dx (1)
q(x)
In the case of discrete probability laws, defined on the finite
set of points {x1 , x2 , · · · }, this divergence is defined as follows
:
P({xi })
K(Q|P) = ∑ log P({xi }) (2)
i Q({xi })

We have chosen to use a measure derived from the One can easily show that K(Q|P) ≥ 0 with equality when
information theory called Kullback-Leibler divergence. Since, the two laws are identical. One can thus use K(Q|P) as a
thanks to the use of the Pearson system, we have an analytical measure of the divergence from Q to P. This measure is not

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symmetric : K(Q|P) = K(P|Q). One can define a symmetric
version by writing:

D(P, Q) = D(Q, P) = K(Q|P) + K(P|Q) (3)

that we will call Kullback-Leibler distance, KLD.

B. Parametric estimation of the Kullback-Leibler distance

In order to achieve a robust estimation of the KLD, we will
use a parametric estimation of the two probability densities,
and we will numerically compute the KLD.
1) Probability density estimation : the Pearson system:
The Pearson system consists on a set of eight distributions Fig. 2. Kullback-Leibler distance on the Pearson plane.
(gaussian, gamma, beta, etc.). Details on the theory about
the Pearson system can be found in [3]. All the parameters
of these distributions can be obtained as a function of two
parameters :

µ23
β1 = , (4a)
µ32
µ4
β2 = . (4b)
µ22
That means that any distribution of the Pearson system can
be identified from a given sample by computing the 4 first
statistical moments. That also means that any distribution
can be represented by a point on the (β1 , β2 ) plane, the
Pearson plane. For instance, the gaussian distribution has
(β1 , β2 ) = (0, 3). Fig. 3. Kullback-Leibler distance on the Pearson plane.

Figure 1 shows an example of distribution estimation. The

histogram of the image patch is plotted with dots and the
2) Kullback-Leibler distance on the Pearson plane:
corresponding estimated Pearson distribution is shown in
Once the probability densities of the two image patches
continuous line.
that we want to compare are estimated, we numerically
can compute the KLD. Actually, one could argue that give
the fact that we have a parametric representation of each
probability distribution, (β1 , β2 ), an euclidean distance on the
Pearson plane could be used in order to asses the change of
probability law.

In order to show that the KLD gives a different information

Fig. 1. Example of Pearson density estimation.
The main advantage of working with the Pearson system
is that a robust estimate of the first four moments can be
obtained using only a few pixels. Thus, one can locally
estimate the probability distribution using a small window on
the image.
than this euclidean distance, we propose the following
experience : we set a given probability density, that is a point
in the Pearson plane; then we compute the DKL between
this distribution and any other distribution of the Pearson
system (any other point on the Pearson plane). To examples
of this experience are shown on figures 2 and 3, where each
point of the Pearson plane has been given a gray level which
is proportional to the DKL.
If the information given by the DKL was analogous to
an euclidean distance on the (β1 , β2 ) vector, we should see
an isotropic gradient of the gray levels centered on the
distribution to which we compute the KLD. We see that this

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is not the case.

III. E XAMPLE OF APPLICATION

We show here an example of application of these technique
to a real case. A couple of Radarsat images after and before
the eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano (D.R. of Congo)
which occurred in January 2002 have been used. The first
Radarsat available acquisition was a F2 beam for which no
archive data was available. A F5 archive beam was used
instead. In the figure 4 on can see the images and the
comparison between the result obtained with the classical
image intensity ratio approach and the method proposed here.

One can see that the changes detected with the KLD
method have sharp edges and the image is less noisy.
However, the type of change detected is the same using both
methods.

IV. C ONCLUSIONS
A method for performing change detection on SAR images
has been proposed. The main advantage of this method, when
compared to the classical image intensity ratio, is that images
acquired with slightly different incidence angles can be used.
Our method estimates the evolution of the probability law on (a) Before (b) After
the neighborhood of each pixel. Actually, our method can be
considered as an extension of the classical one, which actually
measures the evolution of the first statistical moment (the
mean intensity on the pixel neighborhood). The KLD method
measures the evolution of the probability distribution, which
also includes the evolution of the mean. One such method,
usually would need a lot of samples (large image window,
which implies a loss of geometrical resolution) in order to
achieve a robust estimate of the probability distributions. We
can avoid these problem by using a parametric estimation of
the laws thanks to the Pearson system.

R EFERENCES
[1] Y. Delignon, R. Garello, and A. Hillion, “Statistical modelling of ocean
SAR images,” IEE Proc. on Radar, Sonar and Navig., vol. 44, no. 66,
pp. 348–354, 1997.
[2] R. Touzi, A. Lopes, and P. Bousquet, “A Statistical and Geometrical
Edge Detector for SAR Images,” IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and
Remote Sensing, vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 764–773, 1988.
[3] N. Johnson and S. Kotz, Distributions in statistics: continuous univariate
distributions. Wiley Interscience, 1969.

(c) Intensity ratio (d) Kulback-Leibler dis-

tance

Fig. 4. Change detection : comparison between the image intensity ratio

and the KLD using the same window size (35 × 35 pixels).

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