Precise Relative Geometric Correction for Multi-Sensor Satellite Images

Abstract

Rapid progress in satellite technology has led to a noticeable surge in availability of Earth observation satellite images, which are being collected daily from satellites deployed worldwide. However, even with advanced satellite positioning equipment, there are still diverse level of remaining positional errors. This is a hindrance to satellite image utilization. Therefore, positional errors between satellite images must be corrected before utilization. Relative geometric correction of satellite images is a technique that adjusts geometric displacements based on their relative positional relationships in image or object space. In this study, we propose homography-based bundle adjustment for relative geometric correction of multi-sensor satellite images. Our method aims to estimate optimal ground plane on which images are projected and quickly generate result image. For experiments, orthorectified satellite images with various resolutions and georeferencing information were employed as input data. The experiment results showed that the average error, which was initially 4.96 pixels before relative geometric correction, was decreased to 1.73 pixels after applying the proposed method.