Shadow detection and removal using a shadow formation model

This work is devoted to shadow detection and removal from very high resolution (VHR) satellite images. As an example, a WorldView-2 satellite image of an urban area was processed. The presence of shadows can cause a loss of a significant part of useful information. To restore illumination in shadowed areas and increase image quality, we have developed an efficient shadow removal algorithm. In order to obtain a shadow mask we used color transformation and thresholding. To remove shadows, a shadow formation model is used.