Building detection and height retrieval in urban areas in the framework of high resolution optical and SAR data fusion

In this paper, we propose a symmetrized version of a semiautomatic processing chain, able to provide the simple 3D reconstruction of buildings in urban scenes, from high-resolution optical and SAR imagery. The new elaborated chain gives an equivalent part to the optical and SAR components, in order to fully exploit complementary information provided by proper building features in both images. First, the initial processing chain is reminded and completely illustrated on a studied scene on real data. Then, three points of improvements by process symmetrization are discussed: an augmentation of the detection rate in the footprint extraction step, an increase of the reliability attached to the estimated building heights and a joint improvement of the steps of building validation and qualification. Its is shown that the appropriate combination of optical and SAR features, inside some processing steps, could give better results of reconstruction.