Simulation-Based Interpretation and Alignment of High-Resolution Optical and SAR Images

The successful alignment of optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite data requires that we account for the effects of sensor-specific geometric distortion, which is a consequence of the different imaging concepts of the sensors. This paper introduces SimGeoI, a simulation framework for the object-related interpretation of optical and SAR images, as a solution to this problem. Using metainformation from the images and a digital surface model as input, the processor follows the steps of scene definition, ray tracing, image generation, geocoding, interpretation layer generation, and image part extraction. Thereby, for the first time, object-related sections of optical and SAR images are automatically identified and extracted in world coordinates under consideration of three-dimensional object shapes. A case study for urban scenes in Munich and London, based on WorldView-2 images and high-resolution TerraSAR-X data, confirms the potential of SimGeoI in the context of a perspective-independent and object-focused analysis of high-resolution satellite data.