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CloudFCN: Accurate and robust cloud detection for satellite imagery with deep learning

Francis, A; Sidiropoulos, P; Muller, JP; (2019) CloudFCN: Accurate and robust cloud detection for satellite imagery with deep learning. Remote Sensing , 11 (19) , Article 2312. 10.3390/rs11192312. Green open access

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Abstract

Cloud masking is of central importance to the Earth Observation community. This paper deals with the problem of detecting clouds in visible and multispectral imagery from high-resolution satellite cameras. Recently, Machine Learning has offered promising solutions to the problem of cloud masking, allowing for more flexibility than traditional thresholding techniques, which are restricted to instruments with the requisite spectral bands. However, few studies use multi-scale features (as in, a combination of pixel-level and spatial) whilst also offering compelling experimental evidence for real-world performance. Therefore, we introduce CloudFCN, based on a Fully Convolutional Network architecture, known as U-net, which has become a standard Deep Learning approach to image segmentation. It fuses the shallowest and deepest layers of the network, thus routing low-level visible content to its deepest layers. We offer an extensive range of experiments on this, including data from two high-resolution sensors-Carbonite-2 and Landsat 8-and several complementary tests. Owing to a variety of performance-enhancing design choices and training techniques, it exhibits state-of-the-art performance where comparable to other methods, high speed, and robustness to many different terrains and sensor types.

Type: Article
Title: CloudFCN: Accurate and robust cloud detection for satellite imagery with deep learning
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3390/rs11192312
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11192312
Language: English
Additional information: © 2019 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
Keywords: clouds; deep learning; machine learning; computer vision; multispectral; optical
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Space and Climate Physics
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10084321
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