Automatic Building Detection in Aerial Images Using a Hierarchical Feature Based Image Segmentation

This paper introduces a novel automatic building detection method for aerial images. The proposed method incorporates a hierarchical multilayer feature based image segmentation technique using color. A number of geometrical/regional attributes are defined to identify potential regions in multiple layers of segmented images. A tree-based mechanism is utilized to inspect segmented regions using their spatial relationships with each other and their regional/geometrical characteristics. This process allows the creation of a set of candidate regions that are validated as rooftops based on the overlap between existing and predicted shadows of each region according to the image acquisition information. Experimental results show an overall shape accuracy and completeness of 96%.