Geometric Calibration of the Dmc: Method and Results

The Digital Mapping Camera (DMC) is the well-known new digital aerial camera system of Z/I Imaging. Analogue aerial cameras manufactured by Carl Zeiss have been successfully used around the world for many decades due to their outstanding photogrammetric performance. The DMC will continue this success and uses therefore an optical design based on CCD-matrix sensors to achieve high geometrical resolution and accuracy together with multi-spectral capabilities. It comprises 8 synchronously operating CCD cameras. Four parallel cameras can generate multi-spectral imagery for the acquisition of colour composites. Four panchromatic images from converging cameras are mosaicked digitally to form a single high resolution image with a large ground coverage. The paper describes this key post processing mosaiking procedure to transform the four individual high-resolution panchromatic images into one virtual image which can be considered being of a normal perspective projection, usable by all existing exploitation systems. Additionally, results of the geometric calibration and a test with DMC flight data are presented.