Restoration of Aqua MODIS Band 6 Using Histogram Matching and Local Least Squares Fitting

The MODerate resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) aboard Terra and Aqua platforms is performing well overall, except for Aqua MODIS band 6. Fifteen of the 20 detectors in Aqua MODIS band 6 are nonfunctional or noisy. Without correction, it will cause problems in the higher MODIS products. This paper develops a restoration algorithm to restore the missing data of Aqua MODIS band 6 by combining a histogram-matching algorithm with local least squares fitting. Histogram matching corrects detector-to-detector striping of the functional detectors. Local least squares fitting restores the missing data of the nonfunctional detector based on a cubic polynomial derived from the relationship between Aqua MODIS bands 6 and 7. The Aqua MODIS image data used in this research are in digital number format and are not georectified. The proposed restoring algorithm can be used on both 1000- and 500-m pixel resolutions. The algorithm was tested on both Terra and Aqua MODIS images. For Terra MODIS images, results of restoring the synthetic nonfunctional detectors of band 6 demonstrate that local least squares fitting can fill in the missing data with little distortion. For Aqua MODIS images, the results of the restoring algorithm with and without applying histogram matching were compared to evaluate the capability in removing detector-to-detector stripe noise. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out by visual inspection and quality index. For all the scenes used in this research, the correlation coefficients were near 0.99 and root mean square error between the original Terra band 6 and its simulated one was 2times10^-5. The proposed algorithm can thus be used satisfactorily for restoring Aqua MODIS band 6.