Road Extraction Based on Watershed Segmentation for High Resolution Satellite Images

Recently, the spatial resolution of earth observation satellites is significantly increased to a few meters. Such high spatial resolution images definitely will provide lots of information for detail-thirsty remote sensing users. However, it is more difficult to develop automated image algorithms for automated image feature extraction and pattern recognition. In this study, we propose a two-stage procedure to extract road information from high resolution satellite images. At first stage, a watershed segmentation technique is developed to classify the image into various regions. Then, a knowledge is built for road and used to extract the road regions. In this study, we use panchromatic and multi-spectral images of the IKONOS satellite as test dataset. The experiment result shows that the proposed technique can generate suitable and meaningful road objects from high spatial resolution satellite images. Apparently, misclassified regions such as parking lots are recognized as road needed further refinement in future research.