IMAGE-BASED BRDF MEASUREMENT

Abstract. One of the most challenging effects of remote sensing is landcover materials' Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF). A wide range of approaches and measuring methods address the BRDF in various studies. However, there is a requirement for an accurate measurement setup and costly special equipment. Furthermore, the measurements and calculations are applied to model the BRDF for a single point on the object's surface. Considering these limitations, we propose a new modular framework and methodology for measuring, modeling, and analyzing the BRDF without the need for unique instruments. Instead, we suggest acquiring multiple overlapping images in a simple and time-saving way, sampling the desired object's Region Of Interest (ROI) in one image and automatically tracking it in the other images. Experimental results using laboratory data acquired under controlled conditions clearly show the advantages of our framework in retrieving the camera positions, tracking ROIs in the different images, and accurately measuring the BRDF of various land-cover types. Moreover, we observed the variability of the obtained measurements before and after applying the kernel-driven approach to minimize the BRDF effect. The results show that the applied correction reduces this variability significantly, indicating the high accuracy of measuring the directional reflectance using the proposed approach.