Atmospheric Compensation of Thermal Infrared Hyperspectral Imagery with the Emissive Empirical Line Method and the In-Scene Atmospheric Compensation Algorithms: A Comparison

The in-scene atmospheric compensation (ISAC) algorithm of Young et al. (2002) [14] (and as implemented in the ENVI software system [16] as ‘Thermal Atm Correction’) is commonly applied to thermal infrared multiand hyperspectral imagery (MSI and HSI, respectively). ISAC estimates atmospheric transmissivity and upwelling radiance using only the scene data. The ISAC-derived transmissivity and upwelling radiance are compared to those derived from the emissive empirical line method (EELM), another in-scene atmospheric compensation algorithm for thermal infrared MSI and HSI data. EELM is based on the presence of calibration targets (e.g., panels, water pools) captured in the spectral image data for which the emissivity and temperature are well known at the moment of MSI/HSI data acquisition. EELM is similar in concept to the empirical line method (ELM) algorithm commonly applied to visible/near-infrared to shortwave infrared (VNIR/SWIR) spectral imagery and is implemented as a custom ENVI plugin application. Both ISAC and EELM are in-scene methods and do not require radiative transfer modeling. ISAC and EELM have been applied to airborne longwave infrared (LWIR; ~7.5 μm to ~13.5 μm) HSI data. Captured in the imagery are calibration panels and/or water pools maintained at different temperatures facilitating the application of EELM. Overall, the atmospheric compensation parameters derived from the two methods are in close agreement: the EELM-derived ground-leaving radiance spectra generally contain fewer residual atmospheric spectral features, although ISAC sometimes produces smoother ground-leaving radiance spectra. Nonetheless, the agreement is viewed as validation of ISAC. ISAC is an effective atmospheric compensation algorithm that is readily available to the remote sensing community in the ENVI software system. Thus studies such as the present testing and comparing ISAC to other methods are important. The ISAC and EELM algorithms are discussed as are the airborne LWIR and simulated HSI data to which they are applied. Also presented are analyses and comparisons of the retrieved transmissivity and upwelling radiance terms.