Extraction of river networks from satellite images by combining mathematical morphology and hydrology

  • Authors:
  • Pierre Soille;Jacopo Grazzini

  • Affiliations:
  • Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, DG Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Ispra, Italy;Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, DG Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Ispra, Italy

  • Venue:
  • CAIP'07 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Computer analysis of images and patterns
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new methodology for extracting river networks from satellite images. It combines morphological generalised geodesic transformations with hydrological overland flow simulations. The method requires the prior generation of a geodesic mask and a marker image by applying a series of transformations to the original image. These images are then combined so as to produce a pseudo digital elevation model whose valleys match the desired networks. The performance of the methodology is demonstrated for the extraction of river networks from a single band of a Landsat image. The method is generic in the sense that it can be extended for the extraction of other types of arborescent networks such as blood vessels in medical images.