Comparing geometric and radiometric information from GeoEye-1 and WorldView-2 multispectral imagery

Abstract

A comparison between GeoEye-1 (Geo format) and WorldView-2 (Basic and Ortho Ready Standard format) multispectral (MS) imagery regarding both geometric and radiometric characteristics was carried out over the same study area. Firstly, the attainable geopositioning accuracies on seven single MS images from both very high resolution sensors were compared in the same conditions, both along the sensor orientation and orthorectification phase. The orthoimages planimetric accuracy was ranging from 1.86 m to 2.22 m. The best results were achieved in the case of GeoEye-1 MS orthoimages, nearly followed by those coming from WorldView-2 ones. Secondly, and regarding the radiometric characteristics of the both MS sensors tested, a higher digital numbers’ histogram compression in the case of WorldView-2 was found in the four common bands shared by both MS sensors, especially in the blue band. A no-reference assessment of image quality by using blur ratio was also computed in order to attain image sharpness metric. The blur ratio presented slightly lower values for the GeoEye-1 images.