Pixel Factory

PixelFactory
The PixelFactory is a solution developped by Infoterra to mass-produce digital aerial and satellite images.

Introduction
The Pixel Factory is able to automatically process vast volumes of raw earth observation data from multiple sensors and produce a wide range of cartographic end products (e.g. Digital Surface Models, TrueOrtho™ and Countrywide Ortho mosaics). Pixel Factory possesses advanced features including mass parallel computation, efficient cartographic data generation and high production task automation.

Pixel Factory: Concepts
The Pixel Factory is fully integrated into a software and hardware distribution solution allowing productivity and easy access to the software. Moreover, this solution is based on a recognised standard and is easily upgradeable in order to take into account:

• data source evolution: easy to integrate and extract information from new data sources, • end-product evolution: easy to change the production workflow to generate new products, • demand evolution: easy to upgrade the system in order to increase productivity.

The system manages the data and production workflow itself.

The system
• Parallel Processing: the proposed system is natively designed to handle multiple parallel processing, thus tremendously reducing computation time, • System User Interface: the System User Interface is GUI driven, • Project Browser tool: the system comes with tools to browse project data in a graphical environment, • Production Workflow: the Pixel Factory contains an embedded production workflow mechanism which, during production, helps users find relevant tasks to perform, • System Administration: the interface is accessible through any traditional internet navigator(Internet Explorer, Netscape...) to manage the system.

Cartographic Algorithms
• Geometry: push-broom sensor calibration, aerial & spatial multi-sensor fast triangulation, fast automated tie-point generation & filtering, • Image enhancement, • Terrain extraction: automated Dense Digital Surface Model extraction, semi-automated Digital Terrain Model extraction using DSM filtering techniques, automated contour lines generation from DTM, DSM Filtering, • Image mosaic generation: TrueOrtho image processing capabilities, automatic building delineation for Mosaic seam-lines, automated mosaicking (Orthoimage & elevation image), registered CIR push-broom image rectification, • Miscellaneous features: image & Vector reformatting, cartographic re-projection, fast editing capabilities on large images, change detection thanks to DSM comparison.

End Products
The Pixel Factory processes diverse products using aerial and satellite sensors, following the high-level workflow depicted in the next figure: • Ground Orthoimages, • TrueOrtho™ images, • Digital Surface Model, • Digital Terrain Model, • Change detection map.