Automatic Rectification of Landsat Images Using Features Derived from Digital Terrain Models

ID
TR-80-10
Authors
James Joseph Little
Publishing date
December 1980
Abstract

Before two images of the same object can be compared, they must be brought into correspondence with some reference datum. This process is termed registration. The reference can be one of the images, a synthetic image, a map or other symbolic representation of the area imaged. A novel method is presented for automatically determining the transformation to align a Landsat image to a digital terrain model, a structure which represents the topography of an area. Parameters of an affine transformation are computed from the correspondence between features of terrain derived from the digital terrain model, and brightness discontinuities extracted from the Landsat image.