With the continuous development of technology and resolution on synthetic aperture radar(SAR)

thinner spatial features can be observed from the high resolution of newly available SAR images. Due to the larger data volume and higher application requirements

the traditional pixel-based methods have many limitations in high-resolution SAR processing. Object-based image analysis(OBIA)provides a new idea for high resolution remote sensing image analysis based on the pixel set-"object"

which is becoming one of the hot spots of remote sensing

photogrammetry and GIS. Currently

the technique has been widely used in optical remote sensing. However

the application in SAR image processing is still in its early stage. The objective of this review paper is to provide a comprehensive overview and sound summary of all of the work undertaken. In this paper

after briefly introducing the origin and characteristic of object-based image analysis technique

the muti-scale segmentation methods commonly used in SAR image

are introduced. Then the applications of object-based image analysis in high resolution SAR images processing are presented. Finally

the conclusions are drawn and the outlook of the applications of object-oriented technology in SAR image is given. The object-based image analysis has been used in some SAR applications successfully

such as image classification

information extraction of urban area

change detection

the monitoring on ocean and forest. The object-based image analysis plays an important role in solving the scale effect and speckle reduction of high-resolution SAR images. Recently

while some excellent studies have been performed in the applications of SAR Images with object-based image analysis

many challenges remain and much work still needs to be investigated.