Thin Cloud Removal Based on Signal Transmission Principles and Spectral Mixture Analysis
Cloud removal is an important goal for enhancing the utilization of optical remote sensing satellite images. Clouds dynamically affect the signal transmission due to their different shapes, heights, and distribution. In the case of thick opaque clouds, pixel replacement has been commonly adopted. For thin clouds, pixel correction techniques allow the effects of thin clouds to be removed while retaining the remaining information in the contaminated pixels. In this paper, we develop a new method based on signal transmission and spectral mixture analysis for pixel correction which makes use of a cloud removal model that considers not only the additive reflectance from the clouds but also the energy absorption when solar radiation passes through them. Data correction is achieved by subtracting the product of the cloud endmember signature and the cloud abundance and rescaling according to the cloud thickness. The proposed method has no requirement for meteorological data and does not rely on reference images. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed approach is able to perform effective removal of thin clouds in different scenarios.