A Landsat digital image rectification system

Abstract

DIRS is a digital image rectification system for the geometric correction of Landsat multispectral scanner digital image data. DIRS removes spatial distortions from the data and brings it into conformance with the universal transverse mercator (UTM) map projection. Scene data in the form of landmarks or ground control points (GCP's) are used to drive the geometric correction algorithms. The system offers extensive capabilities for “shade printing” to aid in the determination of GCP's. Affine, two-dimensional least squares polynominal and spacecraft attitude modeling techniques for geometric mapping are provided. Entire scenes or selected quadrilaterals may be rectified. Resampling through nearest neighbor or cubic convolution at user designated intervals is available. The output products are in the form of digital tape in band-interleaved, single-band, or CCT format in a rotated UTM projection. The system was designed and implemented on large-scale IBM 360 computers with at least 300–500 kbytes of memory for user application programs and five 9-track tapes plus direct access storage.