Synthetic Images for Evaluating Topographic Correction Algorithms

In the last years, many topographic correction (TOC) methods have been proposed to correct the illumination differences between the areas observed by optical remote sensors. Although the available number of TOC methods is high, the evaluation of their performance generally relies on the existence of precise land-cover information, and a standardized and objective evaluation procedure has not been proposed yet. In this paper, we propose an objective procedure to assess the accuracy of these TOC methods on the basis of simulated scenes, i.e., synthetically generated images. These images represent the radiance an optical sensor would receive under specific geometric and temporal acquisition conditions and assuming a certain land-cover type. A simplified method for creating synthetic images using the state-of-the-art irradiance models is proposed, both considering the real topography of a certain area [synthetic real (SR) image] or considering the relief of this area as being completely flat [synthetic horizontal image (SH)]. The comparison between the corrected image obtained by applying a TOC method to the SR and SH images of the same area, allows assessing the performance of each TOC algorithm. This comparison is quantitatively carried out using the structural similarity index. The proposed TOC evaluation procedure is applied to a specific case study in northern Spain to explain its implementation and demonstrate its potential. The procedure proposed in this paper could be also used to assess the behavior of TOC methods operating under different scenarios considering diverse topographic, geometrical, and temporal acquisition configurations.