Padikkal, P.Banothu, B.2026-02-052018International Journal of Remote Sensing, 2018, 39, 20, pp. 6540-65561431161https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2018.1460510https://idr.nitk.ac.in/handle/123456789/24966In this article, we modify Mumford–Shah level-set model to handle speckles and blur in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. The proposed model is formulated using a non-local regularization framework. Hence, the model duly cares about local gradient oscillations (corresponding to the fine details/textures) during the evolution process. It is assumed that the speckle intensity is gamma distributed, while designing a maximum a posteriori estimator of the functional. The parameters of the gamma distribution (i.e. scale and shape) are estimated using a maximum likelihood estimator. The regularization parameter of the model is evaluated adaptively using these (estimated) parameters at each iteration. The split-Bregman iterative scheme is employed to improve the convergence rate of the model. The proposed and the state-of-the-art despeckling models are experimentally verified and compared using a large number of speckled and blurred SAR images. Statistical quantifiers are used to numerically evaluate the performance of various models under consideration. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Image enhancementMaximum likelihood estimationParameter estimationSpeckleSynthetic aperture radarTracking radarGamma distributionGamma-distributedIterative schemesMaximum a Posteriori EstimatorMaximum likelihood estimatorNon-local regularizationRegularization parametersSynthetic Aperture Radar ImageryRadar imagingimage processingimagerymodelingspecklesynthetic aperture radar