Change Detection based on Difference Image and Energy Moments in Remote Sensing Image Monitoring

Abstract

Permanent control of environment by using remote sensing images requires effective techniques. Two new methods for remote sensing image change detection are proposed. The first method is based on the notion of difference image and image histograms. A complementary pair of images is proposed as the main presentation of a difference image which allows automatic separation of the changes of ground objects without loss or distortion. The use of the histograms in accordance with variations of image brightness (increasing and decreasing) provides opportunities for the assessment and experimental verification of existing approaches in the selection of automatic detection thresholds. The second method for change detection is based on energy moments for image rows and/or columns. It allows one to find image changes even in one pixel and differs from the existed methods by a more simple algorithm and possibility to extract even small changes. The proposed image representation can be considered as an integral feature of the whole image. The methods have been tested in real images. Comparing to start-of-the-art methods, our methods can detect changes in real-time with high accuracy when deployed on a standard computer.