Buried pipeline mapping from satellite images

A semi-automatic method for the detection and tracking of buried pipelines under a variety of surface coverages is presented and its performance in experiments reported. In high 1 m resolution aerial or satellite images, the buried structures manifest themselves as bands a few pixels wide having contrast and texture changes of the overground growth. Some statistical nonlinear filters are proposed for the detection of such wide linear features, and they are used for the detection of pipeline routes. The pipeline routes are then tracked by exploiting their lateral continuity.