State-of-the-art of geometric correction of remote sensing data: a data fusion perspective

The three-dimensional (3D) geometric processing and ortho-rectification of remote sensing (RS) data becomes a key issue as being the first step in multi-source multi-format data fusion in geographic information systems. The fusion of image data (visible and microwave, panchromatic and multi bands, polarimetric bands, passive and active, etc.), their metadata (GPS, star trackers, inertial system, lens and focal plane, etc.), the associated 3D cartographic data (ground control points, contour lines, digital terrain model (DEM), planimetric features, etc.) is thus a requisite to perform first 3D precise geometric correction and then the ortho-rectification process with DEM. This article presents an update of the state-of-the-art of geometric correction with the source of geometric distortions, the different mathematical models, the methods, algorithms and processing steps to track finally the error propagation during the fusion of the different RS and cartographic data from the image acquisition to the ortho-rectification processes.