Automatic registration of satellite images

Abstract

Image registration is one of the basic image processing operations in remote sensing. With the increase in the number of images collected every day from different sensors, automated registration of multi-sensor/multi-spectral images has become an important issue. A wide range of registration techniques has been developed for many different types of applications and data. Given the diversity of the data, it is unlikely that a single registration scheme will work satisfactorily for all different applications. A possible solution is to integrate multiple registration algorithms into a rule-based artificial intelligence system, so that appropriate methods for any given set of multisensor data can be automatically selected. The objective of this paper is to present an automatic registration algorithm which has been developed at INPE. It uses a multiresolution analysis procedure based upon the wavelet transform. The procedure is completely automatic and relies on the grey level information content of the images and their local wavelet transform modulus maxima. The algorithm was tested on SPOT and TM images from forest, urban and agricultural areas. In all cases we obtained very encouraging results.