A New Approach for Optical and SAR Satellite Image Registration

Over the last years several research studies have shown the high geometric accuracy of high resolution radar satellites like TerraSAR-X. Due to this fact, the impact of high resolution SAR images for image registration has increased. An aim of high accuracy image registration is the improvement of the absolute geometric accuracy of optical images by using SAR images as references. High accuracy image registration is required for different remote sensing applications and is an on-going research topic. The registration of images acquired by different sensor types, like optical and SAR images, is a challenging task. In our work, a novel approach is proposed, which is a combination of the classical feature-based and intensity-based registration approaches. In the first step of the method, spatial features, here roundabouts, are detected in the optical image. In the second step, the detected features are used to generate SAR like roundabout templates. In the third step, the templates are matched with the corresponding parts of the SAR image by using an intensity- based matching process. The proposed method is tested for a pair of TerraSAR-X and QuickBird images and a pair of TerraSAR-X and WorldView-2 images of a suburban area. The results show that the proposed method offers an alternative approach compared to the common optical and SAR images registration methods and it can be used for the geometric accuracy improvement of optical images