Category extraction of NOAA AVHRR images by using 3 dimensional histograms

The authors have developed a new image processing method for the analysis of multispectral remote sensing data. The 3 dimensional histogram technique is a method of displaying the brightness of the three different channels of NOAA AVHRR images. They assigned the X, Y and Z-axes of the 3 dimensional space to the brightness of three different channels respectively. This can visualize the same properties of images as a mass in the 3 dimensional space, so it is useful to classify the different categories such as the land, the sea, and the cloud. The 3 dimensional histogram has correspondence to the images and it is possible to rotate the 3 dimensional histogram interactively. So, this method assists a nonexpert to extract his interest categories in a short time.