Fine co-location of pre-corrected ATSR images

Abstract

A fast and automatic algorithm is presented in this paper for co-locating nadir and forward views of the Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) images by using a binary cross-correlation matching technique. The proposed algorithm does not require any auxiliary information, a priori knowledge, or any human operation. Singlechannel thermal infrared (IR) data (I I I'm) are used for this algorithm, giving faster processing and avoiding the imperfect coregistration problem observed with multiple channels. Coastlines in images are detected by a region segmentation and an automatic thresholding technique. The matching procedure is carried out with binary coastline images (nadir and forward), and it gives comparable accuracy and faster processing than a patch based matching technique. This technique reduces geometric errors between two views to ±O·7 pixel.