• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.175-195
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• 1998

Automatic lineament extraction algorithms had been developed by various researches for geological purpose using remotely sensed data. However, most of them are designed for a certain topographic model, for instance rugged mountainous region or flat basin. Most of common topographic characteristic in Korea is a mountainous region along with alluvial plain, and consequently it is difficult to apply previous algorithms directly to this area. A new algorithm of automatic lineament extraction from remotely sensed images is developed in this study specifically for geological applications. An algorithm, named as DSTA(Dynamic Segment Tracing Algorithm), is developed to produce binary image composed of linear component and non-linear component. The proposed algorithm effectively reduces the look direction bias associated with sun's azimuth angle and the noise in the low contrast region by utilizing a dynamic sub window. This algorithm can successfully accomodate lineaments in the alluvial plain as well as mountainous region. Two additional algorithms for estimating the individual lineament vector, named as ALEHHT(Automatic Lineament Extraction by Hierarchical Hough Transform) and ALEGHT(Automatic Lineament Extraction by Generalized Hough Transform) which are merging operation steps through the Hierarchical Hough transform and Generalized Hough transform respectively, are also developed to generate geological lineaments. The merging operation proposed in this study is consisted of three parameters: the angle between two lines($\delta$$\beta$), the perpendicular distance($(d_ij)$), and the distance between midpoints of lines(dn). The test result of the developed algorithm using Landsat TM image demonstrates that lineaments in alluvial plain as well as in rugged mountain is extremely well extracted. Even the lineaments parallel to sun's azimuth angle are also well detected by this approach. Further study is, however, required to accommodate the effect of quantization interval(droh) parameter in ALEGHT for optimization.