Automatic 3D building extraction from stereo IKONOS images

Abstract

In 3D GIS research and development, how to effectively acquire and input a large amount of 3D buildings is always a tough challenge. To date, as the most stable and accurate method, through a photogrammetric instrument, manually measuring buildings one by one, is really a tiring and time-consuming work. Therefore, many researchers have been trying to develop semi-automatic building extraction method or even completely automatic building extraction methods. In this paper we introduce a new method of automatic 3D building extraction based on stereo Ikonos images. This method includes several steps, such as edge detection and connection, building block detection and corner detection, and building extraction and image matching. The final result is 3D coordinates of buildings. We used a scene of stereo images to test our program. Only about 15 minutes were needed to process a scene of Ikonos image (2613 by 3539 pixels). The final result is reported. Corresponding discussions are conducted and conclusions are given based on the test results and discussions. © 2006 IEEE.