Sonar image denoising based on clustering and Bayesian sparse coding

Side-scan sonar image (SSI) are often affected by a combination of multiplicative speckle noise and additive noise, which degrades image quality and hinders target recognition and scene interpretation. To address this problem, this paper proposes a denoising algorithm that integrates non-local similar block clustering with Bayesian sparse coding. The proposed method leverages cross-scale structural features and noise statistical properties of image patches, and employs a similarity metric based on the Equivalent Number of Looks (ENL) along with an improved K-means clustering algorithm to achieve accurate classification and enhance intra-class noise consistency. Subsequently, a joint training strategy is used to construct dictionaries for each cluster, and Bayesian Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (BOMP) is applied for sparse representation. This enables effective modeling and suppression of mixed noise while preserving structural details. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms several classical approaches in both objective metrics such as PSNR and SSIM, and in visual quality, particularly in preserving target edges and textures under severe noise conditions.