Development of the precision image processing system for CAS-500

Recently, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Ministry of Science and ICT are developing the Land Observation Satellite (CAS-500) to meet increased demand for high-resolution satellite images. Expected image products of CAS-500 includes precision orthoimage, Digital Surface Model (DSM), change detection map, etc. The quality of these products is determined based on the geometric accuracy of satellite images. Therefore, it is important to make precision geometric corrections of CAS-500 images to produce high-quality products. Geometric correction requires the Ground Control Point (GCP), which is usually extracted manually using orthoimages and digital map. This requires a lot of time to acquire GCPs. Therefore, it is necessary to automatically extract GCPs and reduce the time required for GCP extraction and orthoimage generation. To this end, the Precision Image Processing (PIP) System was developed for CAS-500 images to minimize user intervention in GCP extraction. This paper explains the products, processing steps and the function modules and Database of the PIP System. The performance of the System in terms of processing speed, is also presented. It is expected that through the developed System, precise orthoimages can be generated from all CAS-500 images over the Korean peninsula promptly. As future studies, we need to extend the System to handle automated orthoimage generation for overseas regions.