Influence of camera distortions on satellite image registration and change detection applications

Applications such as change detection and digital elevation model extraction from optical images require a rigorous modeling of the acquisition geometry. We show that the unrecorded satellite jitter during image acquisition, and the uncertainties on the CCD arrays geometry are the current major limiting factors for applications requiring high accuracy. These artifacts are identified and quantified on several optical satellites, i.e., SPOT, ASTER, QuickBird, and HiRISE