Interactive dynamic range reduction for SAR images

The visualization of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data involves the mapping from high dynamic range amplitude values to gray values of a lower dynamic range display device. This dynamic range reduction process controls the amount of information in the displayed result and is therefore an important part of each SAR visualization system. Interactive systems provide the user with immediate feedback on the changes of the reduction method and its parameters. In this letter, we examine different dynamic range reduction techniques known from the tone mapping of optical images. The techniques are analyzed, regarding their applicability to SAR data, and incorporated into our interactive visualization framework based on programmable graphics hardware.