CORRECTION OF SYSTEMATIC RADIOMETRIC INHOMOGENEITY IN SCANNED AERIAL CAMPAIGNS USING PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS

Abstract. Orthophotomosaic is defined as a single image that can be layered on a map. The term “mosaic” implies that it is produced from a set of images, usually aerial images. Even if these images are taken during cloudless period, they are impaired by radiometric inhomogeneity mostly due to atmospheric phenomena, like hotspot, haze or high altitude clouds shadows as well as imaging device systematisms, like lens vignetting. These create some unsightly radiometric inhomogeneity in the orthophotomosaic that could be corrected by using a Wallis filter. Yet this solution leads to a significant loss of contrast at small scales. This work introduces an alternative to Wallis filter by considering some systematic radiometric behaviours in the images through a principal component analysis process.