A scheme for reconstructing height of 3D terrain map from shading of a multi-spectral band satellite image

Abstract

This paper proposes a technique for creating a 3D terrain map from gray scale image. This technique is accomplished by using the principle of light and shadow in terms of azimuth, elevation angle and light path to locate the actual position of shadow on the image. The shading area is approximated from the group of image data itself and the line of shadow is focused from the azimuth angle. The unwanted shadow is found for subtraction out of the shading to attain the actual shadow of an object. The object height is simply calculated from the elevation angle. The bilinear algorithm is applied to smooth the geographical surface. The reconstruction of terrain map shows good result with little error.