The design of a MATLAB GUI environment for the implementation of nonlinear edge-enhancing and smoothing filters to aid in the detection of oceanic features present in AVHRR thermal imagery

This research studied the use of nonlinear stack filters to enhance oceanic features present in Sea Surface Temperature (SST) imagery derived from AVHRR thermal images. These filters present smoothing and edge-enhancing properties that can be used for feature detection purposes to remove spot noise and enhance step edges. The Sea Surface Temperature Environment (SEASTENV) application was developed using MATLAB Graphical User Interface (GUI) tools to facilitate the use of these filters by earth scientists. The SEASTENV provides easy access to different filter algorithms and their respective tuning parameters. Tests in different images are presented in the thesis which show the performance of the filters as these parameters are varied. Some edge operators were also implemented to perform additional image processing, specially the Histogram-based Morphological Edge Detector which was designed originally to operate on thermal oceanic imagery.