Automatic Generation of Digital Terrain Elevations with Single Satellite Imagery

More and more engineering applications need denser and more accurate Digital Terrain Model (DTM) height data. Whereas, collecting additional height data in the field, if not impossible, is either expensive or time consuming or both. Advanced space technology has provided much single high-resolution satellite imageries almost worldwide. This paper discusses the idea of using Shape From Shading (SFS) methods with single high resolution imagery. Regular grids of digital terrain elevations are generated by a four-directional weighed algorithm we propose in this paper. Preliminary results are very encouraging and the methodology is going to be implemented with real satellite imagery and parallel computations