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At least 235 records · Page 13

Image-Based Empirical Modeling of the Plasmasphere

A new suite of empirical models of plasmaspheric plasma based on remote, global images from the IMAGE EUV instrument is proposed for development. The purpose of these empirical models is to establish the statistical properties of the plasmasphere as a function of conditions. This suite of models will mark the first time the plasmaspheric plume is included in an empirical model. Development of these empirical plasmaspheric models will support synoptic studies (such as for wave propagation and growth, energetic particle loss through collisions and dust transport as influenced by charging) and serves as a benchmark against which physical models can be tested. The ability to know that a specific global density distribution occurs in response to specific magnetospheric and solar wind factors is a huge advantage over all previous in-situ based empirical models. The consequence of creating these new plasmaspheric models will be to provide much higher fidelity and much richer quantitative descriptions of the statistical properties of plasmaspheric plasma in the inner magnetosphere, whether that plasma is in the main body of the plasmasphere, nearby during recovery or in the plasmaspheric plume. Model products to be presented include statistical probabilities for being in the plasmasphere, near thermal He+ density boundaries and the complexity of its spatial structure.

Adrian, Mark L.↗

Imaging Science Requirements for a Uranus Flagship Mission

Introduction: Our presentation will summarize the requirements for UV/Visible/Near-IR remote-sensing imaging science instruments (including mapping spectrometers) envisioned for the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) mission recommended by the recent planetary decadal survey. The Uranus system offers many targets for imaging investigations. Imaging science investigations are crucial to answering fundamental questions about various physical processes that shape the Uranian system and drive its evolution. Each science objective addressed through imaging has requirements for observation and illumination geometries as well as coverage and resolution in the spatial, spectral and temporal dimensions. By combining the requirements for the diverse science targets in the Uranian system, we present a set of overarching imaging science requirements for UOP. Atmospheric Science: The study of Uranus’ atmosphere is crucial in understanding the planet's energy balance and interior heat flux. Imaging observations map how the atmosphere scatters incident solar radiation. Imaging is key to characterizing planetary-scale energy/material transport though global atmospheric dynamics and local meteorology. Hyperspectral mapping combined with radiative transfer analysis reveals the vertical distribution of clouds and hazes. Chronicling temporal variabilities of atmospheric features is key to understanding the various processes that operate within the dynamic Uranian atmosphere. A comprehensive understanding of Uranus' atmosphere is essential in deciphering the planet's origins and evolution as well as providing insight into the broader field of planetary and exoplanetary science. Magnetospheric Interactions: Imaging science is critical to understand the elusive Uranian aurorae. Mapping the aurorae and their temporal dynamics will reveal the interaction of Uranus’ complex magnetosphere with the solar wind. The apparent decades-long cooling of Uranus’ upper atmosphere is thought to be due to changes in energy input from the overlying magnetosphere, and so mapping and quantifying the auroral evidence for this energy flux is particularly relevant for upper atmospheric science In addition, Uranus’ large moons may generate auroral footprints, which can be used to constrain the planet’s unusual magnetic field structure. Satellite Interiors: Imaging science can address the potential habitability of the larger moons of Uranus by measuring their shapes and rotational states (including librations), which combined with gravity data are crucial to understanding their internal density structure. Satellite Origins: Origin markers such as organics and volatiles may be preserved on the satellite surfaces, which may be sensed by UV/IR mapping. Imaging combined with the moons’ densities may reveal whether the moons formed in Uranus’ circumplanetary disk, rings, or from ejecta of a giant impact on Uranus. Satellite Geology: Imaging investigations, including stereo imaging to obtain topography, will enable constraining each satellite’s geologic history by investigating the distributions and morphologies of impact craters, tectonic and potential cryovolcanic features, and regolith and mass wasting deposits. These records will help unravel the past complex history of orbital resonances that occurred between Uranian satellites, which may have driven geologic activity. Analyses of these features will also point to resurfacing styles and modification processes important for understanding each moon’s thermal evolution, and any present-day geological activity, including potential subsurface deep oceans or possible current activity. Additionally, hyperspectral imaging will enable mapping the surface composition and identifying the potential presence of material that may point to a subsurface ocean, such as ammonia-bearing species. Rings and Small Moons: Imaging observations elucidate the physical processes that contribute to the complex ring-moon system’s inferred unstable state. Imaging surveys will seek smaller moons and other debris that could provide evidence of past collisions, while precise astrometric data of moons will determine the current dynamical state of the system. Many of Uranus' rings are exceptionally narrow, and images of the rings covering a broad range of longitudes, and high-resolution images of features within the rings will reveal how these rings are confined and maintained, as well as illustrating the rings' internal structure and dynamics. Images of the rings and moons obtained at a variety of wavelengths and lighting conditions are also needed to quantify the composition and the size distribution of the small satellites and ring particles.

K M Sayanagi↗

Image Matching Using Generalized Hough Transforms

An image matching system specifically designed to match dissimilar images is described. A set of blobs and ribbons is first extracted from each image, and then generalized Hough transform techniques are used to match these sets and compute the transformation that best registers the image. An example of the application of the approach to one pair of remotely sensed images is presented.

Davis, L. S.↗

Wavelet Compression of Satellite-Transmitted Digital Mammograms

Breast cancer is one of the major causes of cancer death in women in the United States. The most effective way to treat breast cancer is to detect it at an early stage by screening patients periodically. Conventional film-screening mammography uses X-ray films which are effective in detecting early abnormalities of the breast. Direct digital mammography has the potential to improve the image quality and to take advantages of convenient storage, efficient transmission, and powerful computer-aided diagnosis, etc. One effective alternative to direct digital imaging is secondary digitization of X-ray films. This technique may not provide as high an image quality as the direct digital approach, but definitely have other advantages inherent to digital images. One of them is the usage of satellite-transmission technique for transferring digital mammograms between a remote image-acquisition site and a central image-reading site. This technique can benefit a large population of women who reside in remote areas where major screening and diagnosing facilities are not available. The NASA-Lewis Research Center (LeRC), in collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF), has begun a pilot study to investigate the application of the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS) network to telemammography. The bandwidth of the T1 transmission is limited (1.544 Mbps) while the size of a mammographic image is huge. It takes a long time to transmit a single mammogram. For example, a mammogram of 4k by 4k pixels with 16 bits per pixel needs more than 4 minutes to transmit. Four images for a typical screening exam would take more than 16 minutes. This is too long a time period for a convenient screening. Consequently, compression is necessary for making satellite-transmission of mammographic images practically possible. The Wavelet Research Group of the Department of Electrical Engineering at The Ohio State University (OSU) participated in the LeRC-CCF collaboration by providing advanced compression technology using wavelet transform. OSU developed a time-efficient software package with various wavelets to compress a serious of mammographic images. This documents reports the result of the compression activities.

Zheng, Yuan F.↗

Electron-bombarded CCD detectors for ultraviolet atmospheric remote sensing

Electronic image sensors based on charge coupled devices operated in electron-bombarded mode, yielding real-time, remote-readout, photon-limited UV imaging capability are being developed. The sensors also incorporate fast-focal-ratio Schmidt optics and opaque photocathodes, giving nearly the ultimate possible diffuse-source sensitivity. They can be used for direct imagery of atmospheric emission phenomena, and for imaging spectrography with moderate spatial and spectral resolution. The current state of instrument development, laboratory results, planned future developments and proposed applications of the sensors in space flight instrumentation is described.

Carruthers, G. R.↗

Multi-sensor anomalous change detection in remote sensing imagery

Combining multiple satellite remote sensing sources provides a far richer, more frequent view of the earth than that of any single source; the challenge is in distilling these petabytes of heterogeneous sensor imagery into meaningful characterizations of the imaged areas. Meeting this challenge requires effective algorithms for combining multi-modal imagery over time to identify subtle but real changes among the intrinsic data variation. Here, we implement a joint-distribution framework for multi-sensor anomalous change detection (MSACD) that can effectively account for these differences in modality, and does not require any signal resampling of the pixel measurements. This flexibility enables the use of satellite imagery from different sensor platforms and modalities. We use multi-year construction of the SoFi Stadium in California as our testbed, and exploit synthetic aperture radar imagery from Sentinel-1 and multispectral imagery from both Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8. We show results for MSACD using real imagery with implanted, measurable changes, as well as real imagery with real, observable changes, including scaling our analysis over multiple years.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Automated Analysis of Radar Imagery of Venus: Handling Lack of Ground Truth

Lack of verifiable ground truth is a common problem in remote sensing image analysis. For example, consider the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image data of Venus obtained by the Magellan spacecraft. Planetary scientists are interested in automatically cataloging the locations of all the small volcanoes in this data set; however, the problem is very difficult and cannot be performed with perfect reliability even by human experts. Thus, training and evaluating the performance of an automatic algorithm on this data set must be handled carefully. We discuss the use of weighted free-response receiver-operating characteristics (wFROC) for evaluating detection performance when the ground truth is subjective.

Venus Magellan remote sensing image analysis autom↗

Matching Observations to Model Resolution for Future Weather and Climate Applications

High spatial resolution sounding observations will improve initialization and assimilation into the next generation forecast models and validation of the next generation of climate models. One such advanced sounder concept for low earth orbit is the Advanced Remote-sensing Imaging Emission Spectrometer (ARIES) which proposes to provide highvspatial hyperspectral resolution observations in the mid to longwave infrared. This paper explores the effects of spatial resolution on the errors expected from the combined use of models and observations for representing scene information. We calculate the frequency response of the instrument and model and determine the error at any given spatial frequency. The results show that it is vital to have observations match the spatial resolution of models to minimize the uncertainty in the representation of the scene contents.

spatial resolution↗

Airborne imaging spectrometer - A new tool for remote sensing

The first of a new class of remote sensing instruments is described. The Airborne Imaging Spectrometer represents the first use of two-dimensional integrated infrared area arrays in a scientific application. The instrument images 32 cross-track pixels simultaneously, each in 128 spectral bands in the 1.2- to 2.4-micron region. The IFOV of the instrument is 1.9 mrad/pixel and the spectral sampling interval is 9.6 nm. Plans include upgrading the detector from the current 32 x 32 element HgCdTe CCD array to a 64 x 64 element array in 1985. Science and engineering data are currently being actively gathered with the instrument.

Vane, G.↗

Airborne imaging spectrometer - A new tool for remote sensing

The first of a new class of remote sensing instruments is described. The Airborne Imaging Spectrometer represents the first use of two-dimensional area arrays in a scientific application. The instrument images 32 cross-track pixels simultaneously, each in 128 spectral bands in the 1.2 to 2.4 micro region. The IFOV of the instrument is 1.9 mrad and the spectral sampling interval is 9.6 nanometers. Plans include upgrading the detector from the current 32 x 32 element HgCdTe CCD array to a 64 x 64 element array in 1984. Science and engineering data are currently being actively gathered with the instrument.

Vane, G.↗

Deep learning classification of lipid droplets in quantitative phase images

We report the application of supervised machine learning to the automated classification of lipid droplets in label-free, quantitative-phase images. By comparing various machine learning methods commonly used in biomedical imaging and remote sensing, we found convolutional neural networks to outperform others, both quantitatively and qualitatively. We describe our imaging approach, all implemented machine learning methods, and their performance with respect to computational efficiency, required training resources, and relative method performance measured across multiple metrics. Overall, our results indicate that quantitative-phase imaging coupled to machine learning enables accurate lipid droplet classification in single living cells. As such, the present paradigm presents an excellent alternative of the more common fluorescent and Raman imaging modalities by enabling label-free, ultra-low phototoxicity, and deeper insight into the thermodynamics of metabolism of single cells.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

A Marker-Based Approach for the Automated Selection of a Single Segmentation from a Hierarchical Set of Image Segmentations

The Hierarchical SEGmentation (HSEG) algorithm, which combines region object finding with region object clustering, has given good performances for multi- and hyperspectral image analysis. This technique produces at its output a hierarchical set of image segmentations. The automated selection of a single segmentation level is often necessary. We propose and investigate the use of automatically selected markers for this purpose. In this paper, a novel Marker-based HSEG (M-HSEG) method for spectral-spatial classification of hyperspectral images is proposed. Two classification-based approaches for automatic marker selection are adapted and compared for this purpose. Then, a novel constrained marker-based HSEG algorithm is applied, resulting in a spectral-spatial classification map. Three different implementations of the M-HSEG method are proposed and their performances in terms of classification accuracies are compared. The experimental results, presented for three hyperspectral airborne images, demonstrate that the proposed approach yields accurate segmentation and classification maps, and thus is attractive for remote sensing image analysis.

Tarabalka, Y.↗

Digital Images on the DIME

With NASA on its side, Positive Systems, Inc., of Whitefish, Montana, is veering away from the industry standards defined for producing and processing remotely sensed images. A top developer of imaging products for geographic information system (GIS) and computer-aided design (CAD) applications, Positive Systems is bucking traditional imaging concepts with a cost-effective and time-saving software tool called Digital Images Made Easy (DIME(trademark)). Like piecing a jigsaw puzzle together, DIME can integrate a series of raw aerial or satellite snapshots into a single, seamless panoramic image, known as a 'mosaic.' The 'mosaicked' images serve as useful backdrops to GIS maps - which typically consist of line drawings called 'vectors' - by allowing users to view a multidimensional map that provides substantially more geographic information.

Source record↗

Use of radar image texture in geologic mapping

Large slope angle radar and small slope angle radar techniques are discussed. The techniques are developed to aid in the geologic interpretation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. The application presented is for heavy vegetation and where very little other data can be obtained directly from remote sensing images. To understand the relationships between image texture, topography, lithology, geomorphology, and climate improves, textural information from SAR images are used for the identification of rock types to discriminate units. An active program is to integrate textural information from radar images directly with backscatter data from the same images, and with compositional information derived from visible near infrared sensors such as LANDSAT is explored. The role of quantitative textural information in this type of multisensor analysis which promises to be significant is outlined.

Farr, T. G.↗

Compensation for the Atmosphere in Radiance Measured by the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer and Applications to an Advanced Land Remote Sensing System

The Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer measures spatial images of the total upwelling spectral radiance from 400 to 2500 nm through 10 nm spectral channels. Quantitative research and application objectives for surface investigations require conversion of the measured radiance to surface reflectance or surface leaving radiance. To calculate apparent surface reflectance an estimation of atmospheric water vapor abundance, cirrus cloud effects, surface pressure elevation and aerosol optical depth is also required. Algorithms for the estimation of these parameters from the AVIRIS data themselves are described. Based upon these determined atmospheric parameters we show an example of the calculation of apparent surface reflectance from the AVIRIS-measured radiance using a radiative transfer code.

Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer AVI↗

Mapping CDOM Concentration in Waters Influenced by the Mississippi River Plume

Colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) is often an important component of the organic carbon pool in river-dominated coastal margins. CDOM directly influences remote sensing applications through its strong absorption in the UV and blue regions of the spectrum. This effect can complicate the use of chlorophyll a retrieval algorithms and phytoplankton production models that are based on remotely sensed ocean color. As freshwater input is the principle source of CDOM in coastal margins, CDOM distribution can often be described by conservative mixing with open ocean waters and may serve as an optical tracer of riverine water. Hence, there is considerable interest in the ability to accurately measure and map CDOM concentrations as well as understand the processes that govern the optical properties and distribution of CDOM in coastal environments. We are examining CDOM dynamics in the waters influenced by the Mississippi River plume. Our program incorporates discrete samples, flow-through measurements, and remote sensing. CDOM absorption spectra of discrete samples are measured at sea using a portable, multiple pathlength waveguide system. A SAFire multi-spectral fluorescence meter provides spectral characterization of CDOM (fluorescence and absorption) using a ship flow-through system for continuous surface mapping. In situ reflectance spectra are obtained by a hand held spectroradiometer. Remotely sensed images are obtained from the SeaWiFS and CRIS (Coastal Research Imaging Spectrometer) instruments. We describe here the instruments used, sampling protocols employed, and the relationships derived between in situ measurements and remotely sensed data for this optically complex environment.

Miller, Richard L.↗

Earth science research

The analysis of ground-truth data from the boreal forest plots in the Superior National Forest, Minnesota, was completed. Development of statistical methods was completed for dimension analysis (equations to estimate the biomass of trees from measurements of diameter and height). The dimension-analysis equations were applied to the data obtained from ground-truth plots, to estimate the biomass. Classification and analyses of remote sensing images of the Superior National Forest were done as a test of the technique to determine forest biomass and ecological state by remote sensing. Data was archived on diskette and tape and transferred to UCSB to be used in subsequent research.

Botkin, Daniel B.↗