The Removal of Trembling Artifacts for FORMOSAT-2

  • Chang Li-Hsueh (National Space Organization (NSPO) National Application Research Laboratories (NARL)) ;
  • Wu Shun-Chi (National Space Organization (NSPO) National Application Research Laboratories (NARL)) ;
  • Cheng Hsin-Huei (National Space Organization (NSPO) National Application Research Laboratories (NARL)) ;
  • Chen Nai-Yu (National Space Organization (NSPO) National Application Research Laboratories (NARL))
  • Published : 2005.10.01

Abstract

Since the successful launch of FORMOSAT -2 satellite by National Space Organization of Taiwan in May 2004, the Remote Sensing Instrument (RSI) on- board the FORMOSAT -2 has continuously acquired images at one panchromatic and four multi-spectral bands (http://www.nspo.org.tw). In general, the RSI performs well and receives high quality images which proved to be very useful for various applications. However, some RSI panchromatic products exhibit obvious trembling artifact that must be removed. Preliminary study reveals that the trembling artifact is caused by the instability of the spacecraft attitude. Though the magnitude of this artifact is actually less than half of a pixel, it affects the applicability of panchromatic products. A procedure removing this artifact is therefore needed for providing image products of consistent quality. Due to the nature of trembling artifact, it is impossible to describe the trembling amount by employing an analytic model. Relied only on image itself, an algorithm determining trembling amount and removing accordingly the trembling artifact is proposed. The algorithm consists of 3 stages. First, a cross-correlation based scheme is used to measure the relative shift between adjacent scan lines. Follows, the trembling amount is estimated from the measured value. For this purpose, the Fourier transform is utilized to characterize random shifts in frequency domain. An adaptive estimation method is then applied to deduce the approximate trembling amount. In the subsequent stage, image re-sampling operation is applied to restore the trembling-free product. Experimental results show that by applying the proposed algorithm, the unpleasant trembling artifact is no longer evident.

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