On the Illumination Invariance of the Level Lines under Directed Light: Application to Change Detection

We analyze the illumination invariance of the level lines of an image. We show that if the scene surface has Lambertian reflectance and the light is directed, then a necessary and sufficient condition for the level lines to be illumination invariant is that the three-dimensional scene be developable and that its albedo satisfy some geometrical constraints. We then show that the level lines are “almost” invariant for piecewise developable surfaces. Such surfaces fit most of the urban structures. This allows us to devise a fast and simple algorithm that detects changes between pairs of remotely sensed images of urban areas, independently of the lighting conditions. We show the effectiveness of the algorithm both on synthetic OpenGL scenes and real QuickBird images. The synthetic results illustrate the theory developed in this paper. The two real QuickBird images show that the proposed change detection algorithm is discriminant. For easy scenes it achieves a rate of 85% detected ch...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: SIAMIS
• Authors: Pierre Weiss, Alexandre Fournier, Laure Blanc-Féraud, Gilles Aubert
• Keywords: Developable Surfaces, Geometrical Constraints, SIAMIS 2011, Three Dimensional Scene