Intelligent interpolation methods for a full-scale SPOT-DEM

Intelligent schemes for an automatic generation of DEM (digital elevation model) are implemented. The need for these post-processing schemes is that interpolation alone produces severe blunders, however sophisticated it is. These blunders occur most seriously along the boundaries of a scene, over rivers, and along the coast. Even a state-of-the-art commercial software retains such blunders. The intelligent schemes implemented are (1) center-of-gravity and empty-center-index which quantify how evenly distributed interpolants are within in interpolation radius. (2) a segmentation scheme to discern whether or not an empty segment in stereo-match results should be interpolated, and (3) a segmentation scheme for removing noise-like features, with these methods, in the final DEM, identical coastline and river region to those in the original SPOT scenes are achieved. The DEM exhibits substantial improvements over the products of an existing commercial software.