Epipolar Resampling of High Resolution Satellite Imagery

This paper presents a practical method of epipolar resampling of high-resolution satellite imagery. Satellite imagery imaged with a linear array CCD sensor has quite different geometric characteristics from aerial photographs, therefore the conventional method of epipolar resampling is not applicable to it. On the other hand, epipolar resampling method based on rigorous orientation model with high geometric fidelity becomes too complicated and then is not suitable practical use. In order to overcome this problem, the author proposes to apply the well-established 2D affine orientation model to the epipolar resampling of satellite imagery. Firstly, this paper roughly mentions the characteristics of this model. Then it is shown how the model is suitably applicable to epipolar resampling. Secondly, the paper proposes the improved method that does not require any DTM or rigorous geometric parameters for reduction of vertical parallaxes. Finally an experiment validates the proposed method with SPOT imagery, where the RMS value of vertical parallaxes between a pair of stereo epipolar images was less than half a pixel.