Remote Sensing Digital Image Analysis: An Introduction

379 Pages·1999·14.464 MB·English

by  John A. Richards, Xiuping Jia (auth.)

Remote Sensing Digital Image Analysis
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg GmbH
John A. Richards · Xiuping Jia
Remote Sensing Digital
Image Analysis
An Introduction
Third Edition with 181 Figures
John A. Richards
Research School ofInformation Sciences
and Engineering
The A us tralian National University
Canberra ACT 0200
Australia
e-mail: [e-mail]
XiupingJia
School of Electrical Engineering
University College
The University of New South Wales
Australian Defence Force Academy
Campbell ACT 2600
Australia
e-mail: [e-mail]
ISBN 978-3-662-03980-9 ISBN 978-3-662-03978-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-03978-6
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Die Deutsche Bibliothek • CIP·Einheitsaufnahme
Richards. John A.:
Remote sensing digital image analysis: an introduction / John A. Richards; Xiuping Jia .•
Berlin; Heidelberg; New York; Barcelona; Hong Kong; London; Milan; Paris; Singapore;
Tokyo: Springer. 1999
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o Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1999
Originally published by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York in 1986. 1993 and 1999
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 3rd edition 1999
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Preface to the Third Edition
In the time since the second edition of this text was produced two significant trends
have been apparent. First, access to image processing technology has continued to
improve significantly with most students and practitioners now having readily avail
able inexpensive workstations and powerful software for analysing and manipulating
image data.
The second change has been the dramatic increase in the numbers of satellite,
aircraft and sensor programs. Perhaps most significant is the widespread availability
of hypers pectral data and the special challenges presented by that data type for infor
mation extraction.
Accordingly, this third edition has been written to reflect those trends while, at the
same time, preserving the important elements of image processing and analysis algo
rithms of significance in remote sensing applications.
The major changes between the previous edition and this are an update of Chapter 1,
and the introduction ofa new Chapter 13 dealing with methods for analysing hyper
spectral data sets.
Chapter 12 has also been significantly altered to provide a focus on the interpreta
tion of data sets that are mixed and could contain, for example, different types of
imagery along with other spatial data types found in a geographic information
system. The previous knowledge-based material has been retained but material
originally covered in Chapter 8 dealing with multi-source data analysis has been
combined with knowledge-based methods to create this chapter on data fusion.
The authors wish to express their appreciation to their colleagues for the assistance
they have received in preparing this new edition. In particular David Langrebe of
Purdue University remains a great supporter and both authors have had the benefit of
working with Dave over the years, including periods spent at Purdue.
The authors are also enormously grateful to their families for their understanding
and support in making the completion of this third edition possible.
Canberra, Australia, August 1998 John A. Richards
Xiuping Jia
Preface to the Second Edition
Possibly the greatest change confronting the practitioner and student of remote sensing
in the period since the first edition of this text appeared in 1986 has been the enormous
improvement in accessibility to image processing technology. Falling hardware and
software costs, combined with an increase in functionality through the development of
extremely versatile user interfaces, has meant that even the user unskilled in computing
now has immediate and ready access to powerful and flexible means for digital image
analysis and enhancement. An understanding, at algorithmic level, of the various
methods for image processing has become therefore even more important in the past few
years to ensure the full capability of digital image processing is utilised.
This period has also been a busy one in relation to digital data supply. Several nations
have become satellite data gatherers and providers, using both optical and microwave
technology. Practitioners and researchers are now faced, therefore, with the need to be
able to process imagery from several sensors, together with other forms of spatial data.
This has been driven, to an extent, by developments in Geographic Information Systems
(GIS) which, in tum, have led to the appearance of newer image processing procedures
as adjuncts to more traditional approaches.
The additional material incorporated in this edition addresses these changes. First,
Chapter I has been significantly revised to reflect developments in satellite and sensor
programs. Removal of information on older systems has been resisted since their data is
part of an important archive which still finds value, particularly for historical applica
tions.
Chapter 8, dealing with supervised classification methods, has been substantially
increased to allow context classification to be addressed, along with techniques, such as
evidential processing and neural networks, which show promise as viable image inter
pretation tools. While the inclusion of these topics has caused the chapter to become
particularly large in comparison to the others, it was felt important not to separate the
material from the more traditional methods. The chapter is now presented therefore in
two parts - the first covers the standard supervised classification procedures and the
second the new topics.
A departure from the application of classical digital image processing to remote
sensing over the last five years has been the adoption of knowledge-based methods,
where qualitative rather than quantitative reasoning is used to perform interpretations.
This is the subject of a new chapter which seeks to introduce reasoning based on knowl
edge as a means for single image interpretation, and as an approach that can deal
successfully with the mixed spatial data types of a GIS.
Besides these changes, the opportunity has been taken to correct typographical and
related errors in the first edition and to bring other material up to date.
As with the first edition, the author wishes to record his appreciation to others for their
Preface to the Second Edition VII
support and assistance. Ashwin Srinivasan, now with the Turing Institute in Glasgow, as
a very gifted graduate student, developed much of the material on which Chapter 12 is
based and, during his time as a student, helped the author understand the mechanisms of
knowledge processing. He also kindly read and offered comments on that chapter. The
author's colleague Don Fraser similarly read and provided comments on the material on
neural networks. Philip Swain and David Landgrebe of Purdue University continue to
support the author in many ways: through their feedback on the fIrst edition, their inter
action on image processing, and Dave's provision of MultiSpec, the Macintosh
computer version of the LARSYS software package. Finally, the author again expresses
gratitude to his family for their constant support, without which the energy and
enthusiasm needed to complete this edition might not have been found.
Canberra, Australia, March 1993 John A Richards
Preface to the First Edition
With the widespread availability of satellite and aircraft remote sensing image data in
digital form, and the ready access most remote sensing practitioners have to computing
systems for image interpretation, there is a need to draw together the range of digital
image processing procedures and methodologies commonly used in this field into a
single treatment. It is the intention of this book to provide such a function, at a level
meaningful to the non-specialist digital image analyst, but in sufficient detail that
algorithm limitations, alternative procedures and current trends can be appreciated.
Often the applications specialist in remote sensing wishing to make use of digital
processing procedures has had to depend upon either the mathematically detailed
treatments of image processing found in the electrical engineering and computer
science literature, or the sometimes necessarily superficial treatments given in general
texts on remote sensing. This book seeks to redress that situation.
Both image enhancement and classification techniques are covered making the
material relevant in those applications in which photointerpretation is used for
information extraction and in those wherein information is obtained by classification.
It grew out of a graduate course on digital image processing and analysis techniques for
remote sensing data given annually since 1980 at the University of New South Wales. If
used as a graduate textbook its contents with the exception of Chap. 7 can be covered
substantially in a single semester. Its function as a text is supported by the provision of
exercises at the end of each chapter. Most do not require access to a computer for
solution. Rather they are capable of hand manipulation and are included to highlight
important issues. In many cases some new material is introduced by means of these
exercises.
Each chapter concludes with a short critical bibliography that points to more
detailed treatments of specific topics and provides, where appropriate, comment on
techniques of marginal interest to the mainstream of the book's theme.
Chapter 1 is essentially a compendium of data sources commonly encountered in
digital form in remote sensing. It is provided as supporting material for the chapters
that follow, drawing out the particular properties of each data source of importance.
The second chapter deals with radiometric and geometric errors in image data and with
means for correction. This also contains material on registration of images to maps and
images to each other. Here, as in all techniques chapters, real and modelled image data
examples are given. Chapter 3 establishes the role of computer processing both for
photointerpretation by a human analyst and for machine analysis. This may be skipped
by the remote sensing professional but is an important position chapter if the book is to
be used in teaching.
Chapters 4 and 5 respectively cover the range of radiometric and geometric en
hancement techniques commonly adopted in practice, while Chap. 6 is addressed to
Preface to the First Edition IX
multispectral transformations of data. This includes the principal components
transformation and image arithmetic. Chapter 7 is given over to Fourier transform
ations. This material is becoming more important in remote sensing with falling
hardware costs and the ready availability of peripheral array processors. Here the
properties of discrete Fourier analysis are given along with means by which the fast
Fourier transform algorithm can be used on image data.
Chapters 8, 9 and 10 provide a treatment of the tools used in image classification,
commencing with supervised classification methods, moving through commonly used
clustering algorithms for unsupervised classification and concluding with means for
separability analysis. These are drawn together into classification methodologies in
Chap. 11 which also provides a set of case studies.
Even though the treatment provided is intended for the non-specialist image analyst,
it is still necessary that it be cast in the context of some vector and matrix algebra.
Otherwise it would be impracticable. Consequently, an appendix is provided on
essential results on vectors and matrices, and all important points in the text are
illustrated by simple worked examples. These demonstrate how vector operations are
evaluated. Beyond this material it is assumed the reader has a passing knowledge of
basic probability and statistics including an appreciation of the multivariate normal
distribution.
Several other appendices are provided to supplement the main presentation. One
deals with developments in image processing hardware and particularly the architec
ture (in block form) of interactive image display sub-systems. This material highlights
trends towards hardware implementation of image processing and illustrates how
many of the algorithms presented in the book can be executed in near real time.
Owing to common practice, some decisions have had to be taken in relation to
definitions even though they could offend the purist. For example the term "pixel"
strictly refers to a unit of digital image data and not to an area on the ground. The latter
is more properly called an effective ground resolution element. However because the
practice of referring to ground resolution elements as pixels, dimensioned in metres, is
so widespread, the current treatment seeks not to be pedantic but rather follows
common practice for simplicity. A difficulty also arises with respect to the numbering
chosen for the wavebands in the Landsat multispectral scanner. Historically these have
been referred to as bands 4 to 7 for Landsats 1 to 3. From Landsat 4 onwards they have
been renumbered as bands 1 to 4. The convention adopted herein is mixed. When a
particular satellite is evident in the discussion, the respective convention is adopted and
is clear from the context of that discussion. In other cases the convention for Landsat 4
has been used as much as possible.
Finally, it is a pleasure to acknowledge the contributions made by others to the
production of this book. The manuscript was typed by Mrs Moo Song and Mrs Ailsa
Moen, both of whom undertook the task tirelessly and with great patience and
forbearance. Assistance with computing was given by Leanne Bischof, at all times
cheerfully and accurately. The author's colleagues and students also played their part,
both through direct discussion and by that process of gradual learning that occurs over
many years of association. Particular thanks are expressed to two people. The author
counts himself fortunate to be a friend and colleague of Professor Philip Swain of
Purdue University, who in his own way, has had quite an impact on the author's
thinking about digital data analysis, particularly in remote sensing. Also, the author
x
Preface to the First Edition
has had the good fortune to work with Tong Lee, a graduate student with
extraordinary insight and ability, who also has contributed to the material through his
many discussions with the author on the theoretical foundations of digital image
processing.
The support and encouragement the author has received from his family during the
preparation of this work has been immeasurable. It is fitting therefore to conclude in
gratitude to Glenda, Matthew and Jennifer, for their understanding and enthusiasm.
Kensington, Australia, May 1986 John A. Richards