Automatic Detection of Buildings with Rectangular Flat Roofs from Multi-view Oblique Imagery

Automatic building detection plays an important role in many applications. Traditionally, buildings were detected from monocular or multi-view images, DEM or DSM, and laser scanner data. Oblique imagery is a relatively new data source with distinct advantages: it provides detailed information on facades and multiple views from various perspectives. In this paper we present exploration tests using only oblique imagery for the detection of buildings, mainly focus on rectangular flat roof type. It has two major stages: 1) generating robust facades from 3D lines extracted from multiple images; and 2) determining the height and roof outlines from a single facade of one building by plane sweeping and image segmentation. All tested buildings with rectangular flat roofs were successfully distinguished from other buildings, and their height and roof outlines were correctly detected. The novelty of this paper is the combination of geometric and radiometric approaches requiring only oblique imagery. This approach can be improved by adjusting the segmentation method and adding parameters for plane sweeping in order to be successful on buildings of other types. * Corresponding author.