Analysis of terrain using multispectral images

-Automated terrain analysis is required for many practical applications, such as outdoor navigation, image exploitation, remote sensing, reconnaissance and surveillance. In this paper, we present a hierarchical approach to analyze multispectral (MS) imagery for autonomous land vehicle navigation. The approach integrates several strategies to label various terrain classes in these images acquired using twelve spectral bands in the visible and near-infrared spectrum. At the low (pixel) level, it combines texture gradient results from specifically selected channels by varying the size of gradient operators and performing multithresholding and relaxation-based edge linking operations to obtain robust closed region boundaries. At the high (symbolic) level, it makes use of the spectral, locational, and relational constraints among regions to achieve accurate terrain image interpretation. Details of the technique with examples from real imagery collected by an autonomous land vehicle (ALV) are presented. Copyright © 1997 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. Hierarchical terrain analysis Image interpretation Multispectral imagery Outdoor navigation Region labeling Texture segmentation