Geo-registration of Landsat data by robust matching of wavelet features

The goal of our project is to build an operational system, which will provide a sub-pixel accuracy registration of Landsat-5 and Landsat-7 data. Integrated within an automated mass processing/analysis system for Landsat data (REALM), the input to our registration method consists of scenes that have been geometrically and radiometrically corrected, as well as pre-processed for detection of clouds and cloud shadows. Such pre-processed scenes are then geo-registered relative to a database of Landsat chips. This paper describes our registration process, including the use of a database of landmark chips, a feature extraction performed by an overcomplete wavelet representation, and feature matching using statistically robust techniques. Knowing the approximate longitudes and latitudes of the four corners of the scene, a subset of chips which represent landmarks included in the scene are extracted from the database. For each of these selected landmark chips, a corresponding window is extracted from the scene, and each chip-window pair is registered using our robust wavelet feature matching. First results and future directions are presented in the paper.