A comprehensive data management and fusion system for multi-band imaging systems and associated data

In order to optimally discriminate military targets from the background, it is necessary to compare and fuse remote sensing data from multiple sources including high-resolution panchromatic imagery data, modest resolution multispectral imagery (MSI) data and modest to coarse resolution hyperspectral imagery (HSI) data. The data fusion involves radiometric calibration, geocoding, and topographic relief correction of the remote sensing data, integration of these data with multiple geographic information system (GIS) files, and analysis of the fused data with discrimination algorithms. These operations and the subsequent analysis require complex software components. These software components require expertise to correctly perform the data fusion operations. With an additional requirement of near-real-time processing, automation of data management and processing become essential. Both data integrity and a controlled log of what processing has been performed on each set of data for standard processing and experimental development processing are important for data traceability. A data management and fusion system has been devised to control all of the image data and correlative data resulting from atmospheric measurements and ground truth measurements. The integration of several standard commercial and non-commercial tools into the data system enables the user to access dependable GIS and/or spectral processing algorithms.