Oil Spill Detection via Multitemporal Optical Remote Sensing Images: A Change Detection Perspective

Oil spill monitoring in optical remote sensing (RS) images is a challenging task due to the complexity of target discrimination in an oil spill scenario. Differently from traditional oil spill detection methods that are mainly carried out in a monotemporal image, in this letter, a novel solution is given in a multitemporal domain by investigating potential capability of change detection (CD) techniques, and it mainly contributes to an unsupervised, semiautomatic, and efficient approach. It opens a new perspective for solving an oil spill detection problem. In particular, a coarse-to-fine multitemporal change analysis procedure is designed to investigate the spectral–temporal variation of change targets present in the scenario. Changes relevant and irrelevant to suspected oil spills are identified and discriminated according to a binary and a multiple CD process, respectively. The proposed approach provides a quick yet effective oil spill detection solution, which is valuable and important in practical applications. The proposed method was validated on two real multitemporal RS data sets presenting the oil spill event in northern Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Experimental results confirmed its effectiveness.