Knowledge-Based Aerial Image Understanding Systems and Expert Systems for Image Processing

This paper discusses roles of artificial intelligence in the automatic interpretation of remotely sensed imagery. We first discuss several image understanding systems for analyzing complex aerial photographs. The discussion is mainly concerned with knowledge representation and control structure in the aerial image understanding systems: a blackboard model for integrating diverse object detection modules, a symbolic model representation for three-dimensional object recognition, and integration of bottom-up and top-down analyses. Then, a model of expert systems for image processing is introduced that discusses which and what combinations of image processing operators are effective to analyze an image. Various information about image processing techniques is used to find efficient and reliable image analysis processes. In general, two kinds of knowledge, that is, knowledge about objects and about analysis tools (i. e., image processing techniques) are required to realize versatile photointerpretation systems.