Fine co-location of pre-corrected ATSR images

Abstract A fast and automatic algorithm is presented in this paper for co-locating nadir and forward views of the Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) images by using a binary cross-correlation matching technique. The proposed algorithm does not require any auxiliary information, a priori knowledge, or any human operation. Singlechannel thermal infrared (IR) data (11 μm) are used for this algorithm, giving faster processing and avoiding the imperfect coregistration problem observed with multiple channels. Coastlines in images are detected by a region segmentation and an automatic thresholding technique. The matching procedure is carried out with binary coastline images (nadir and forward), and it gives comparable accuracy and faster processing than a patch based matching technique. This technique reduces geometric errors between two views to ±0·7 pixel.