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A Survey on Geometric Correction of Satellite Imagery

Article  in  International Journal of Computer Applications · April 2015

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 116 – No. 12, April 2015

A Survey on Geometric Correction of Satellite Imagery

Chintan P. Dave Rahul Joshi S. S. Srivastava, PhD

I.T. Department I.T. Department Scientist-SE,
Parul Institute of Engineering Parul Institute of Engineering MSDPD/DPSG/SIPA
and Technology, Vadodra, and Technology, Vadodra, SAC, ISRO, Ahmedabad,
Gujarat, India Gujarat, India Gujarat, India

ABSTRACT categories: the Observer or the acquisition system (platform,

In remote sensing data, geometric distortions are observed due imaging sensor and other measuring instruments etc.) and the
to acquisition system and the movements of the platform. A Observed (atmosphere and Earth) [1]. Table 1: describes in
geometric correction of the image is required whenever the more detail the sources of distortion for each category.
image is to be compared with existing maps or with other Table 1 Sources of Geometric Distortions
images. This review paper enlists various Preprocessing
techniques for geometric correction of raw images. Category Sub-category Description
Preprocessing of satellite image is prerequisite for further
analysis applications such as change detection, object Variation of movement,
Platform
identification, image classification etc. attitude
The Observer
or acquisition Variation in sensor
Keywords Sensor
system mechanism
Geometric Distortion, Pre-processing, Geometric Correction, Measuring
Ortho-rectification, Image Rectification, Image Registration, Time variation
instrument
Mathematical Model, Ground Control Points
Atmospheric conditions:
1. INTRODUCTION Atmosphere Refraction, reflection,
turbulence
Remote Sensing is the science and art of retrieving The Observed
information about objects without physically or intimate Curvature, rotation,
Earth
contact with them. There are two major characteristics of topographic effect
image i.e. Geometric and Radiometric. Geometric Map Ellipsoid/Datum
characteristics based on co-ordinates of image and the
radiometric characteristics describe the actual information Geometric distortion may cause changes of scale over the
content in image. Distortion is noise in information or image, irregularities in the angular relationships among the
alternation of original signal or shape. Raw images generally image elements, displacement of objects in an image and
contain such significant amount of distortion that they cannot occlusion of one image element by another. There are two
be used directly with map base products such as geographic types of geometric error occurrences [4, 5]:
information system (GIS) [1]. These distortions may be due to
several factors including the perspective of the sensor optics;
2.1 Systematic Errors
the motion of the scanning system; the motion of the platform; Generally caused by Scan skew, mirror scans, velocity
the platform altitude, attitude, and velocity; the terrain relief; variance, panoramic distortion, platform velocity and, earth
and, the curvature and rotation of the Earth. The sources of rotation. These errors can correct through analysis of system
geometric distortions are classified in two categories: characteristics and ephemeris.
Observer and Observed. 2.2 Nonsystematic Errors
Generally caused by altitude variance and varied platform
Preprocessing of satellite images prior to image application is
attitude. These errors can correct with the use of ground
essential. Preprocessing commonly encompasses a series of
control points.
sequential operations, such as atmospheric correction
Geometric distortions can also categorize as internal
(normalization), image registration, geometric correction,
distortions and external distortions. Internal distortions are
radiometric correction and masking [5]. This review paper is
generally occurs due to platform or observer’s movement,
mainly focus on geometric correction of distorted raw image.
while external distortions are due to observed object.
The goal of geometric correction is to make image distortion
Following figure shows the various effects generated during
free. Image registration is the process of spatially aligning two
image distortions.
or more images scene obtained at different time or from
different sensors. The word image registration is used in
different literatures as geometric registration, and rectification
of geometric distortion or polynomial affine transformation.
The image acquired earlier date is known as base image and,
recently acquired image with error is to be corrected.

2. GEOMETRIC DISTORTION
Remote sensing imagery contains unique geometric distortion.
The sources of distortion can be grouped into two broad

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 116 – No. 12, April 2015

3. GEOMETRIC CORRECTION
Geometric corrections are made to correct the
inconsistency between the location coordinates of the raw
image data, and the actual location coordinates on the ground
or base image. Several types of geometric corrections include
system, precision, and terrain corrections. Geometric
correction is necessary to preprocess remotely sensed data and
remove geometric distortion so that individual picture
elements (pixels) are in their proper planimetric (x, y) map
locations [2]. Planimetric elements in geography are those
features that are independent of elevation, such as roads,
building footprints, and rivers and lakes. They are represented
on two-dimensional maps as they are seen from the air, or in
aerial photography. Geometrically corrected imagery can be
used to extract accurate distance, polygon area, and direction
(bearing) information.
Remotely sensed imagery collected from airborne or space
borne sensors often contain internal and external geometric
errors. These can be systematic (predictable) or nonsystematic
(random) as listed above. Some of these errors can be
corrected by using ephemeris of the platform and known
internal sensor distortion characteristics. Other errors can only
be corrected by matching image coordinates of physical
features recorded by the image to the geographic coordinates
of the same features collected from a map or global
Fig 1: Internal Distortions positioning system (GPS). To remove the error from image
rectification is necessary. This process is known as an image
rectification.
There are four different levels of geometric correction of
remotely sensed imagery [5]:
a) Registration- alignment of one image to another image
of the same area
b) Rectification- alignment of image to a map so that the
image is planimetric, just like the map; Also known as
geo-referencing
c) Geocoding- A special case of rectification that includes
scaling to a uniform standard pixel GIS
d) Orthorectification- Correction of the image, pixel by
pixel for topographic distortion.
There are two major techniques for geometric correction [5]:
a) Modeling
First technique is modeling the nature and magnitude of all
sources of geometric distortion and find the corresponding
correction formulae. This approach works well when all
sources of distortion are well understood and can be
quantified. This is not the case for all sources of distortion,
particularly not for the unsystematic variations in satellite
altitude etc.
b) Empirical
Empirical approach uses reference points (ground control
points). This approach required some ancillary information
such as image acquisition data, yaw, pitch, roll values and
other information in XML format.
There are two major image geo-correction techniques.
a) Image-to-Map geo-correction- this method used
Fig 2: External Distortions reference frame such as toposheets, maps or any standard
(Universal Transverse Mercator) reference images.

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 116 – No. 12, April 2015

6. ORTHORECTIFICATION
To maintain the geometry of a captured image even when the
camera is not viewing the scene at the nadir angle, the images
have been transformed by a process known as
Orthorectification [4]. Ortho-rectification, converts an image
obtained at an arbitrary roll-pitch-yaw of the camera to one as
if obtained when roll, pitch, and yaw were all zero. Ortho-
rectification stabilizes the camera as if it is always looking
down and heading toward the north. Ortho-rectified images
are easier to register and analyses because these are not
geometrically distorted. Correction for an image geometry by
orthorectification, however, results in some intensity
Fig 3: Image-to-Map geo-correction
distortions in the image caused by the resampling process.
b) Image-to-Image geo-correction- these method match
one image to another so the same geographic area is 7. INTERPOLATION
positioned coincident with respect to the other. This type Once the applying geometric transformation; image may be
of geometric correction is used when it is not necessary shear, rotate, transformed or skewed. Pixel Interpolation is
to have each pixel assigned a unique (x, y) coordinate in necessary for filling missing values of area. For that pixel
a map brightness values must be determines. There may not be any
direct one-to-one relation between base image and image
4. VIEWING GEOMETRIC MODEL which is rectified [5]. There is mechanism for determining the
A “viewing geometry model” consists of establishing a brightness value, this process is known as pixel interpolation.
relation between any pixel (l, p) of the level 1A image and the
relative point (λ, ϕ) on terrestrial reference system [8]. In this 8. RESAMPLING
relation, the altitude h of the point on the ground is supposed Resampling process used to determine the digital values to
to be known. place in the new pixel location of the corrected output image,
Fig 3: Viewing geometry model projection this process known as a resampling. Resampling required to
estimate a new pixel between existing pixels due to non-
integer transformed (x, y) [3]. Table 2 shows types of
resampling method.
Table 2. Types of Resampling Method
Type Description
New pixels value get form closest
Nearest Neighbor
pixel of old pixel
New pixels value calculated from the
Bilinear
weighted average of
Interpolation
4(2 × 2) nearest pixels
New pixels are computed from
Where,
Cubic Convolution weighting 16(4 × 4)
l is a line value of image
surrounding DNs
p is a pixel value of image
λ is a Longitude in geodetic reference system
φ is a Latitude in geodetic reference system 9. COMPLICATIONS IN GEOMETRIC
h is an altitude during image acquisition
CORRECTION
Direct model is to compute the intersection between the look Following are the major difficulties occurred during
directions of any pixel (l, p) with an Earth model. This Earth geometric correction process.
model could be estimated by using a Digital Elevation Model 1. Selection of the feature points from the images
(DEM) above an ellipsoid. Reverse model is to compute the 2. Determination of correspondence between images
intersection between the look direction (λ, φ) of DEM
elevated reference with a distorted image [8]. 3. Selection of right transformation function that can
represents geometric distortion between images
5. MATHEMATICAL MODEL 4. No technique to determine correspondence between
The mathematical distortion model such as polynomial model
features points when the images have nonlinear
establish a correspondence between the global coordinates of
geometric distortions.
the distorted image to those in reference image or map.
Polynomial models usually needed for the transformation 10. CONCLUSION
between image and object coordinates. This polynomial Every remote sensing satellite need and requirements of
equation can calculate new output pixel locations (x, y) and geometric correction process. This process may applied on
relate image location to the Ground Control Point location. pre-launch phase or post-launch phase. This paper is only
The following 2D equations are used to commonly for the review the geometric correction techniques, work may remain
polynomial model [2]. for radiometric correction. Once derived mathematical model
X=a+a1x+a2y+a3xy may use for identifying further relationship between images.
Y=b+b1x+b2y+b3xy This paper only enlist and provide overview of various
geometric correction parameters, but one can further take
following references for more details.

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 116 – No. 12, April 2015

11. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Distortions in Satellite Images”, Defence Science

I am very thankful to Dr. Shailendra Shanker Srivastava to Journal, DRDO, Vol. 61, No. 2, March-2011
help me during this survey. I am also thankful Rahul Joshi for [5] Lt. Dr. S. Santosh Baboo, M. Renuka Devi, “Geometric
his immense help in paper preparation and submission. Correction in Recent High Resolution Satellite Imagery:
A Case Study in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu”, International
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