Friday, November 1, 2013

Remote Sensing Lab 4 - Image Functions


            The goal of this lab is to demonstrate how to enhance images in order to preform analysis and also to focus in on a precise area in a large satellite image.  I have delineated the area of interest from a large image, explored techniques to enhance spatial and radiometric resolution, linked Google earth with Erdas Imagine, and used bilinear and nearest neighbor resampling methods. 

            The first part of the lab deals with subsetting images using an inquire box and an area of interest shape file.  First I made an image subset of the Eau Claire area using an inquire box found in the raster tools. 






Next, I used a shapefile to create an area of interest file.  This was done using the subset and chip option in the Raster tools.         



            In the second part of the lab exercise, I have used image fusion to improve the spatial resolution of an image.  I did this using the resolution merge icon in the pan sharpen tools.  First I used the nearest neighbor resampling technique.


 
Then I used the bilinear interpolation resampling technique to fuse the images. 


Both strategies of image fusion result in a pan sharpened image.  The pan sharpened image definitely has a greater range of colors, brighter colors and a higher resolution than the input image.  A pan sharpened image has a higher spatial resolution, which is noticeable especially when you zoom in on the images.  The pan sharpened image also has a larger range of more vibrant tones, the river is a darker black and the pinks are slightly darker or bolder.  Much of the area that was a light blue tone in the input image is more of a grey in the pan sharpened image.

                In part three of the lab I improved the radiometric resolution of an image using the haze reduction tool under radiometric in the raster tools.  The input image is much lighter in color and cloudier than the haze reduction image.  When you zoom in and out the resolution of the images is the same but the colors are definitely brighter and clearer in the haze reduced image.  There are a few places in the input image that have light colored clouds or haze and these do not appear in the haze reduced image.  The rivers went from a blue color to black and the pinks went to more vibrant red tones.  The haze reduced image is definitely clearer.



 
                In part four of the lab I have linked Google Earth with Erdas Imagine in order to create synchronized views of an image.  This was done using the connect to google earth icon, then selecting match GE to view and Link GE to view icons. You can zoom in very close at a high resolution on the google earth viewer, which can be very useful if you are trying to identify elements of an image.  When you zoom in it becomes much easier to identify objects on the google earth image and there are some labels.

                In part five of the lab I used resampling to change the pixel size of an image.  This was done by selecting resample pixel size under spatial in the Raster tools tab.  I changed the output cell size to 20 meters, from the input cell size of 30 meters. I used the nearest neighbor method for the first output image, then the bilinear interpolation method for the second.


 
 There is some difference in the pixilation between the input image and the nearest neighbor resampled image.  When you zoom in very close, you can notice that the pixel size is smaller in the nearest neighbor image and that the formation of the pixels is slightly different.  When zoomed out very far it is hard to tell the difference between the images.  The nearest neighbor method uses the brightness and tone of the closest pixel. The bilinear interpolation image is also similar to the original image when zoomed out, but definitely has a different pixel formation when closely zoomed in.  The bilinear interpolation uses the tone and brightness that is calculated using the four surrounding pixels.  This results in a pixel formation different from the original image and the nearest neighbor image.
Works Cited
"Earth." Google. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013


 "Welcome to the USGS - U.S. Geological Survey." Welcome to the USGS - U.S. Geological Survey. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013

 

 

 

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