An Agreement Coefficient for Image Comparison

Combination of datasets acquired from different sensor systems is necessary to construct a long time-series dataset for remotely sensed land-surface variables. Assessment of the agreement of the data derived from various sources is an important issue in understanding the data continuity through the time-series. Some traditional measures, including correlation coefficient, coefficient of determination, mean absolute error, and root mean square error, are not always optimal for evaluating the data agreement. For this reason, we developed a new agreement coefficient for comparing two different images. The agreement coefficient has the following properties: non-dimensional, bounded, symmetric, and distinguishable between systematic and unsystematic differences. The paper provides examples of agreement analyses for hypothetical data and actual remotely sensed data. The results demonstrate that the agreement coefficient does include the above properties, and therefore is a useful tool for image comparison.