Segmentation for radar images based on active contour

Weather radar data quality control is extremely important for meteorological and hydrological applications. For weather radars, scatterers in the atmosphere are not only meteorological particles like cloud, rain drops, snowflakes, and hails, but also non-meteorological particles such as chaff, insects, and birds. For radar meteorologists it is a major issue and challenge to design numerical scheme which can automatically and subjectively distinguish meteorological echoes from nonmeteorological echoes. Non-meteorological echoes can contaminate radar reflectivity and Doppler velocity measurements, and subsequently cause errors and uncertainty on radar data applications in quantitative precipitation estimation, as well as in assimilation in numerical model for weather prediction. Automatic detection of tornado or mesocyclone vortex among meteorological echoes is certainly another big challenge and has great potential in improving severe weather forecast and saving human life.