Junction-aware extraction and regularization of urban road networks in high-resolution, SAR images

A general processing framework for urban road network extraction in high-resolution synthetic aperture radar images is proposed. It is based on novel multiscale detection of street candidates, followed by optimization using a Markov random field description of the road network. The latter step, in the path of recent technical literature, is enriched by the inclusion of a priori knowledge about road junctions and the automatic choice of most of the involved parameters. Advantages over existing and previous extraction and optimization procedures are proved by comparison using data from different sensors and locations.