Modification of fractal algorithm for oil spill detection from RADARSAT-1 SAR data

Abstract

This paper introduces a modified formula for the fractal box counting dimension. The method is based on utilization of the probability distribution formula in the fractal box count. The purpose of this method is to use it for the discrimination of oil spill areas from the surrounding features, e.g., sea surface and look -alikes in RADARSAT-1 SAR Wide beam mode (W1) and Standard beam mode (S2) data have been collected under different wind speeds. The results show that the new formula of the fractal box counting dimension is able to discriminate between oil spills, look-alike areas and pixels of the size of a single ship. The W1 mode data illustrate an error standard deviation of 0.05, thus performing a better discrimination of oil spills as compared to S2 mode data. We conclude that automatic detection and discrimination of oil spill and other sea surface features can be operationalized by using the new formula for fractal box counting.