A Rigorous Laboratory Calibration Method for Interior Orientation of an Airborne Linear Push-Broom Camera

Abstract

The linear push-broom camera is one of the most important imaging systems in modern photogrammetry and remote sensing to collect high-resolution digital panchromatic and multispectral images for comprehensive evaluation of natural resources and environmental conditions. Most commercial high-resolution satellites such as SPOT-5, Ikonos-2, and QuickBird use similar sensors. Airborne sensors such as the ADS40 and STARIMAGER ® also use the push-broom approach to collect multi-channel, seamless image strips for linear objects such as roads, railways, rivers, seashores, electric power lines, pipe lines, and high-rise building areas. Other commercial hyperspectral sensors also use the pushbroom approach to collect digital images for remote sensing applications. High performance linear cameras require high resolution geometric, spectral, and radiometric calibration. This topic has not been covered in the scientific literature. Although the self-calibration is successful to compute the calibration parameters of frame camera, it is denied in our tests since the linear camera’s calibrated parameters are dependent on the accuracy of on-board GPS/IMU position and attitude data. In this paper, a rigorous calibration method is presented. This approach has been successfully used in our developed airborne three-line scanner (TLS) imaging system STARIMAGER ® in the last five years. The method can accurately compute TLS’s focal length, principle point location, lens distortion, CCD pixel size, CCD curve deformation, and convergence angles between each CCD line sensor on the focal plane. Without any modification, it can be directly applied to single linear sensors and multi-linear sensors.