In this paper we describe a new multi resolution approach to automatic road extraction from aerial images. We make use of the fact that different characteristics of objects such as roads can be best detected in different scales. Two different resolutions of the same image are used, a coarse one with 2 m per pixel, and a fine one with 0.25 m per pixel. In the coarse resolution roads are modeled as bright lines and are extracted by a combination of local and global thresholding. In the fine resolution roads are assumed to have two parallel edges, be bright, and have a homogeneous texture. A multi step procedure has been designed to find the roads according to these criteria. Subsequently both outputs are merged using a rule based system. The developed method has been tested on real imagery, and some preliminary results are reported. Based on the existing experience the multi resolution approach is claimed to be superior to a road extraction in one resolution only.

Date Published: 5 July 1995
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 2486, Integrating Photogrammetric Techniques with Scene Analysis and Machine Vision II, (5 July 1995); doi: 10.1117/12.213122

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2486:
Integrating Photogrammetric Techniques with Scene Analysis and Machine Vision II
David M. McKeown Jr.; Ian J. Dowman, Editor(s)