Epipolar Line Generation from Ikonos Imagery Based on Rational Function Model

High-resolution satellite imagery is expected to be a major source of 3D measurement of ground, especially automatic stereo plotting to generate DEM by stereo matching technology is highly required. Epipolarity is a very useful concept in processing stereo imagery, and it has been widely used in process images captured by frame cameras. Different from perspective image, every scan line of linear array scanner scene has different perspective centre and attitude; this has limited the use of epipolar theory in processing the linear array scanner scenes. The purpose of this paper is to develop a method which can be used to generate the approximate epipolar line of this kind of imagery. The paper firstly describes the epipolar geometry of linear array scanner scenes; then explains the rational function model (RFM) and proposes the use of RFM to generate the epipolar lines; finally, makes a accuracy assessment of the rational polynomial coefficients (RPCs) used in experiment and emphatically describes the procedure and experiment of the generation of epipolar lines and epipolar line pairs of IKONOS stereo imagery.