Utilizing edge to extract roads in high-resolution satellite imagery

Abstract

Although edge detectors are useful for delineating the road areas in an image, no previous work in road extraction has demonstrated a comprehensive use of edge information. In this paper we propose a semi-automatic scheme that makes use of edge information to extract roads in high-resolution satellite images. A novel edge thinning and division algorithm is first applied to process edges in an image. With such processed edges, texture information, color information together with the user assistance, the proposed scheme is able to extract roads from an image with high reliability. This scheme can also make use of knowledge about road network topology to locate road areas. Experiments on high-resolution satellite images of different environmental settings show that our proposed scheme achieves high accuracy in identifying road areas. © 2005 IEEE.