Edge detection of remote sensing image based on Grünwald-Letnikov fractional difference and Otsu threshold

With the development of remote sensing technology, the resolution of remote sensing images is improving, and the presentation of geomorphic information is becoming more and more abundant, the difficulty of identifying and extracting edge information is also increasing. This paper demonstrates an algorithm to detect the edges of remote sensing images based on Grünwald–Letnikov fractional difference and Otsu threshold. First, a convolution difference mask with two parameters in four directions is constructed by using the definition of the Grünwald–Letnikov fractional derivative. Then, the mask is convolved with the gray image of the remote sensing image, and the edge detection image is obtained by binarization with Otsu threshold. Finally, the influence of two parameters and threshold values on detection results is discussed. Compared with the results of other detectors on the NWPU VHR-10 dataset, it is found that the algorithm not only has good visual effect but also shows good performance in quantitative evaluation indicators (binary graph similarity and edge pixel ratio).