An image analysis, application for aerial imagery interpretation

The architecture of an image analysis system called MESSIE (Multi Expert System for Scene Interpretation and Evaluation) is presented. This system reasons from geometric models which are represented by four concepts (geometry, radiometry, context, and function). The aim is to find the class instances from the generic models which are present in the scene. The necessity of having a hierarchic and opportunistic method of solving the problem of interpretation is shown. In a first step, MESSIE tries to detect salient objects. Then, using characteristics of salient objects and knowledge about the context of objects, MESSIE tries to confirm the object hypothesis and to infer new objects in the scene. The domain used to develop MESSIE is aerial imagery interpretation. Results on the detection of roads and buildings in suburban images are given