Extraction of digital elevation models from satellite stereo images through stereo matching based on epipolarity and scene geometry

This paper addresses the problem of generating digital elevation models from satellite images taken by linear pushbroom cameras. Since there exist unique geometric properties for linear pushbroom images, we argue that the conventional DEM generation schemes developed for perspective images are not suitable for satellite images. Using the geometric properties of linear pushbroom images, we design a new matching strategy optimized for linear pushbroom image in three aspects: conjugate search method, correlation patch design and match sequence determination. We will discuss in what aspect conventional approaches and our new approach differ and show how performance has improved by hiring proper techniques. A series of experiments using SPOT panchromatic stereo pairs showed that our approach outperformed conventional approaches in terms of accuracy and processing time. q 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.