Radar and Optical Image Fusion using Airborne Sensor Data from the Heligoland Island

An accurate geometrical alignment of remote sensing data is the basis for higher-level image processing techniques used to extract information. Fusing radar image data with other sensor data sources states a special case because the coordinate system is based on the measured range which causes ambiguous regions due to layover effects. An accurate 3D representation of the scene is essential to find a fitting geometrical transformation between the respective sensor image spaces. This paper applies a method that accurately maps detailed 3D information of the German island of Heligoland to the slant-range-based coordinate system of radar images imaged by DLR’s airborne F-SAR sensor. The highly accurate 3D information along with optical imagery has been acquired by DLR’s airborne optical sensor system MACS.