ACCURACY ASSESSMENT BY REFINING THE RATIONAL POLYNOMIALS COEFFICIENTS(RPCs) OF IKONOS IMAGERY

IKONOS 1m satellite imagery is particularly well suited for 3-D feature extraction and 1 :5,000 scale topographic mapping. Because the image line and sample calculated by given RPCs have the error of more than 11m, in order to be able to perform feature extraction and topographic mapping, rational polynomial coefficients(RPCs) camera model that are derived from the very complex IKONOS sensor model to describe the object-image geometry must be refined by several Ground Control Points(GCPs). This paper presents a quantitative evaluation of the geometric accuracy that can be achieved with IKONOS imagery by refining the offset and scaling factors of RPCs using several GCPs. If only two GCPs are available, the offsets and scale factors of image line and sample are updated. If we have more than three GCPs, four parameters of the offsets and scale factors of image line and sample are refined first, and then six parameters of the offsets and scale factors of latitude, longitude and height are updated. The stereo images acquired by IKONOS satellite are tested using six ground points. First, the RPCs model was refined using 2 GCPs and 4 check points acquired by GPS. The results from IKONOS stereo images are reported and these show that the RMSE of check point acquired from left images and right are 1.021m and 1.447m. And then we update the RPCs model using 4 GCPs and 2 check points. The RMSE of geometric accuracy is 0.621 m in left image and 0.816m in right image.