Voxel area sculpturing‐based 3D scene reconstruction from single‐pass CSAR data

3D scene reconstruction from single‐pass circular synthetic aperture radar (CSAR) data has been a research hot spot in various remote sensing applications. Among existing literature, radargrammetry techniques and model assistant methods are two dominant approaches. However, the performance of these methods is limited in practical applications: radargrammetry techniques obtain merely one height value along vertical; model assistant approaches only work when valid models are given. A single‐pass CSAR 3D scene point cloud reconstruction method is proposed. First, the connection between an object and its projections in multi‐aspect SAR images is established with no auxiliary model. On the basis of the connection, voxels are classified into inner voxels (voxels beneath the target profile) and outside voxels (voxels outside of the target profile). Discarded all the outside voxels, the remained inner voxels are combined to form the 3D point cloud of the target. It is similar to the sculpturing process from a raw material to a piece of craft. Finally, a 3D scene is retrieved through assembling all reconstructed targets into a unified coordinate system. The feasibility of the proposed method is validated by the Gotcha Volumetric SAR Data Set.