A Non-Reference Diffusion-Based Restoration Framework for Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off Imagery in Antarctica

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tang, Leyue, Bamber, Jonathan Louis, Qiao, Gang, Kong, Yuanhang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Tang, Leyue
Bamber, Jonathan Louis
Qiao, Gang
Kong, Yuanhang
author_facet Tang, Leyue
Bamber, Jonathan Louis
Qiao, Gang
Kong, Yuanhang
contents Acquiring usable optical imagery in Antarctica is inherently challenging due to prolonged polar nights and frequent cloud cover. Landsat provides the longest and most continuous optical observations and constitutes one of the most important remote sensing data sources for Antarctic studies. However, the scan-line corrector (SLC) failure in 2003 resulted in approximately 22% missing pixels in Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off imagery, severely limiting its usability. Unlike many non-polar environments, Antarctic surfaces undergo rapid and substantial changes, which makes it difficult to obtain reliable reference imagery and reduces the applicability of conventional reference-based gap-filling methods. To address this challenge, we propose DiffGF, a non-reference diffusion-based framework for restoring Landsat 7 SLC-off imagery without requiring any external reference data. DiffGF adopts a two-stage design consisting of a latent-space diffusion process and a pixel-space refinement. A dedicated Antarctic dataset, SLCANT, is constructed for training and evaluation. Quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate that DiffGF restores Antarctic SLC-off imagery with high fidelity. Its practical value is further examined through a downstream crevasse segmentation application. The results suggest that DiffGF provides a useful approach for exploiting Landsat 7 SLC-off archives in Antarctica, enabling the extraction of valuable information from historical records and supporting related Antarctic studies.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_21371
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Non-Reference Diffusion-Based Restoration Framework for Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off Imagery in Antarctica
Tang, Leyue
Bamber, Jonathan Louis
Qiao, Gang
Kong, Yuanhang
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Acquiring usable optical imagery in Antarctica is inherently challenging due to prolonged polar nights and frequent cloud cover. Landsat provides the longest and most continuous optical observations and constitutes one of the most important remote sensing data sources for Antarctic studies. However, the scan-line corrector (SLC) failure in 2003 resulted in approximately 22% missing pixels in Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off imagery, severely limiting its usability. Unlike many non-polar environments, Antarctic surfaces undergo rapid and substantial changes, which makes it difficult to obtain reliable reference imagery and reduces the applicability of conventional reference-based gap-filling methods. To address this challenge, we propose DiffGF, a non-reference diffusion-based framework for restoring Landsat 7 SLC-off imagery without requiring any external reference data. DiffGF adopts a two-stage design consisting of a latent-space diffusion process and a pixel-space refinement. A dedicated Antarctic dataset, SLCANT, is constructed for training and evaluation. Quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate that DiffGF restores Antarctic SLC-off imagery with high fidelity. Its practical value is further examined through a downstream crevasse segmentation application. The results suggest that DiffGF provides a useful approach for exploiting Landsat 7 SLC-off archives in Antarctica, enabling the extraction of valuable information from historical records and supporting related Antarctic studies.
title A Non-Reference Diffusion-Based Restoration Framework for Landsat 7 ETM+ SLC-off Imagery in Antarctica
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.21371