Pushbroom-Frame Imagery Co-Registration

More and more littoral surveys are conducted with aerial platform sensor suites that include a hyperspectral pushbroom sensor and a frame camera. However, in some cases, data from auxiliary sensors may contain errors or are not available. For many research groups, a high-accuracy registration of the multi-sensor data relative to each other is essential, while absolute geo-location of each individual measurement is not. A co-registration procedure was developed for pseudo ortho-rectification of the hyperspectral imagery and to remove spatial distortions caused by the aircraft's trajectory during the survey based on a flat-earth assumption. This image-processing approach utilizes the aerial frame imagery as a reference. Each hyperspectral scan line is co-registered into the frame imagery coordinate system. The performance of the procedure was evaluated using hyperspectral imagery collected over northern New Hampshire and southern Maine. The evaluation results showed that the procedure is robust enough to pseudo ortho-rectify hyperspectral imagery over coastal areas and to remove significant spatial distortions.