Three-dimensional building detection and modeling using a statistical approach

In this paper, we address the problem of building reconstruction in high-resolution stereoscopic aerial imagery. We present a hierarchical strategy to detect and model buildings in urban sites, based on a global focusing process, followed by a local modeling. During the first step, we extract the building regions by exploiting to the full extent the depth information obtained with a new adaptive correlation stereo matching. In the modeling step, we propose a statistical approach, which is competitive to the sequential methods using segmentation and modeling. This parametric method is based on a multiplane model of the data, interpreted as a mixture model. From a Bayesian point of view, the so-called augmentation of the model with indicator variables allows using stochastic algorithms to achieve both model parameter estimation and plane segmentation. We then report a Monte Carlo study of the performance of the stochastic algorithm on synthetic data, before displaying results on real data.