Radiometric correction of multispectral images using radon transform

Satellite imagery analysis has played a key role in environmental monitoring and modeling over the past few decades. Remotely sensed multitemporal, multisensor data are often required in Earth observation applications. A common problem associated with the use of multisource image data is the gray value differences caused by non-surface factors such as different illumination, atmospheric or sensor conditions. Radiometric corrections serve to remove the effects that alter the spectral characteristics of land features, except for actual changes in ground target, becoming mandatory in multi-sensor, multi-date studies. This paper presents methodology for correction of Landsat TM images in Radon domain. We propose radiometric correction using Radon Transform based regression method. The transform domain method statistically determines correction values based on contrast between spectral properties of various homogeneous areas. TM band 1 is the band most affected by atmospheric scattering whereas TM band 5 is less affected by atmospheric scattering effect. Hence TM Band 5 is taken as the reference image. Results are assessed statistically and compared with results of popular spatial domain Regression Line Method. The application of the methods for vegetation analyses is also shown in this paper. Test results show that the method gives improved results in removal of atmospheric influence.