In this paper, we present a non parametric modeling for phase maps of interferometric SAR. Cosine and Sine projections maps are generated from the SAR phase map, and each of them are individually modeled by fitting 2D basis functions. The coefficients of these basis functions describe a ”smoothed” version of the original phase map. Several applications can be derived from this noise filtered phase map: better phase unwrapping and SAR image compression are two of the applications that we will be discussing in the paper. The approach can be extended to other imaging domains that involve large maps of directional or phase data, such as modeling of phase MRI images, modeling of wind directions in meteorological data, etc. WACV 2008 This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial co...