Automatic Bedrock and Ice Layer Boundaries Estimation in Radar Imagery Based on Level Set Approach

Accelerated loss of ice from Greenland and Antarctica has been observed in recent decades. The melting of polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers has a considerable influence on sea level rise in a changing climate. Ice thickness is a key factor in making predictions about the future of massive ice reservoirs. The ice thickness can be estimated by calculating the exact location of the ice surface and hidden bedrock beneath the ice in radar imagery. Identifying ice surface and bedrock locations is typically performed manually which is a very time consuming procedure. Here we propose an approach which automatically detects ice surface and bedrock boundaries using distance regularized level set evolution. In this approach the complex topology of ice and bedrock boundary layers can be detected simultaneously by evolving an initial curve in radar imagery. Using a distance regularized term, the regularity of the level set function is intrinsically maintained that solves the reinitialization issues arising from conventional level set approaches. The results are evaluated on a large dataset of airborne radar imagery collected during IceBridge mission over Antarctica and Greenland and show promising results in respect to hand-labeled ground truth.