• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.6_1
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• pp.1357-1369
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• 2022

Cloud removal is an essential image processing step for any task requiring time-series optical images, such as vegetation monitoring and change detection. This paper presents a two-stage cloud removal method that combines conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs) with regression-based calibration to construct a cloud-free time-series optical image set. In the first stage, the cGANs generate initial prediction results using quantitative relationships between optical and synthetic aperture radar images. In the second stage, the relationships between the predicted results and the actual values in non-cloud areas are first quantified via random forest-based regression modeling and then used to calibrate the cGAN-based prediction results. The potential of the proposed method was evaluated from a cloud removal experiment using Sentinel-2 and COSMO-SkyMed images in the rice field cultivation area of Gimje. The cGAN model could effectively predict the reflectance values in the cloud-contaminated rice fields where severe changes in physical surface conditions happened. Moreover, the regression-based calibration in the second stage could improve the prediction accuracy, compared with a regression-based cloud removal method using a supplementary image that is temporally distant from the target image. These experimental results indicate that the proposed method can be effectively applied to restore cloud-contaminated areas when cloud-free optical images are unavailable for environmental monitoring.