Qualitative Spatial Reasoning for High-Resolution Remote Sensing Image Analysis

High-resolution (HR) remote-sensing images allow us to access new kinds of information. Classical techniques for image analysis, such as pixel-based classifications or region-based segmentations, do not allow to fully exploit the richness of this kind of images. Indeed, for many applications, we are interested in complex objects which can only be identified and analyzed by studying the relationships between the elementary objects which compose them. In this paper, the use of a spatial reasoning technique called region connection calculus for the analysis of HR remote-sensing images is presented. A graph-based representation of the spatial relationships between the regions of an image is used within a graph-matching procedure in order to implement an object detection algorithm.