This study presents a method to restore an optical satellite image with distortion and occlusion due to fog, haze, and clouds to one that minimizes degradation factors by referring to the same type of peripheral image. Specifically, the time and cost of re-photographing were reduced by partially occluding a region. To maintain the original image’s pixel value as much as possible and to maintain restored and unrestored area continuity, a simulation restoration technique modified with the Cycle Generative Adversarial Network (CycleGAN) method was developed. The accuracy of the simulated image was analyzed by comparing CycleGAN and histogram matching, as well as the pixel value distribution, with the original image. The results show that for Site 1 (out of three sites), the root mean square error and R2 of CycleGAN were 169.36 and 0.9917, respectively,showing lower errorsthan those for histogram matching (170.43 and 0.9896, respectively). Further, comparison of the mean and standard deviation values of images simulated by CycleGAN and histogram matching with the ground truth pixel values confirmed the CycleGAN methodology as being closer to the ground truth value. Even for the histogram distribution of the simulated images, CycleGAN was closer to the ground truth than histogram matching.

Key Words:Deep learning, CycleGAN, High-resolution satellite image