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0027 Weighted temporal coherence through ds_temp_coh; no EMI quality output; speckle correlation internal

Status

Accepted

Date

2026-10-05

Context

Decisions 0023 to 0026 exposed, besides their algorithms, the EMI quality (outputs of emi and of the fused command), ds_temp_coh_weighted, slc_correlation with the command slc-correlation, shp_n_looks, and the options oversampling and rho2. To get the weighted temporal coherence a user had to run one more command and pass its output on, and to choose between two estimates of the effective number of looks of which the exact one (decision 0025) is never worse. The EMI quality is not comparable between regularized points (decision 0026) and is not used for the selection any more. The weighted temporal coherence existed only in the fused command, not in the separate steps emperical-co-pc, emi, ds-temp-coh.

Decision

  • emi(coh, ref=0, regularize=True) returns the phase history only; the commands emi and emperical-co-emi-temp-coh-pc have no EMI quality output.
  • ds_temp_coh(coh, ph, image_pairs=None, block_size=128, n_looks=None): with n_looks (a number or one per point) it returns (t_coh, t_coh_w, eff_n_pairs) of decision 0024 from one pass, t_coh identical to the one without n_looks. The command ds-temp-coh gets the input n_looks and the outputs t_coh_w, eff_n_pairs.
  • The effective number of looks of a point is always the exact one of its SHP set (decision 0025), with |ρ|² measured from the rslc block being processed (median of 3 evenly spaced images; per raster chunk in the commands); the number of SHPs where the block is too small to measure it. emperical_co_pc(..., return_n_looks=True) returns it (command: n_looks_dir); emperical_co_emi_temp_coh_pc(..., weighted=True) (command: t_coh_w_dir, eff_n_pairs_dir) computes it the same way, so the fused command and the separate steps give the same results (identical on the CPU).
  • slc_correlation, shp_n_looks and ds_temp_coh_weighted become internal; the command slc-correlation and the options oversampling and rho2 are removed.

Consequences

  • Breaking: ph = emi(coh) instead of ph, quality = emi(coh) (emi(coh)[0] still runs and gives the phase history of the first point); ph, t_coh = emperical_co_emi_temp_coh_pc(...) (four outputs with weighted=True); pipeline files with emi_quality, emi_quality_dir, oversampling or rho2 stop with an unknown argument error.
  • The EMI quality stays available to the tests (moraine.api.pl._emi). Without the regularization, a temporal coherence near 0 shows the points whose coherence matrix is not positive definite.
  • The effective number of looks depends a little on the raster chunk it is measured in (a few percent for chunks of a few hundred pixels); measuring |ρ|² costs about 0.2 s per raster chunk of 1000 x 1000 pixels, only when the weighted outputs are asked for.
  • ds_temp_coh uses one kernel per device with and without n_looks, so that t_coh is the same bit for bit (two GPU kernels round differently); on an A100 100 000 points x 4186 image pairs take 3.9 ms instead of 3.3 ms without n_looks (4.1 ms with it), on the CPU 85 instead of 102 ms.
  • On the GPU the separate steps and the fused command differ by the rounding of the batched eigen solvers of EMI (different batch sizes), as before; on the CPU they are identical.

Do not

  • Do not add an option to choose how the effective number of looks is estimated: the exact one is never worse than number of SHPs / oversampling.
  • Do not offer the weighted temporal coherence in the fused command only: the separate steps must give the same results.
  • Do not bring back the EMI quality as a selection criterion while the regularization is on.