A comparison of stereo and multiview 3-D reconstruction using cross-sensor satellite imagery

High-resolution and accurate Digital Elevation Model (DEM) generation from satellite imagery is a challenging problem. In this work, a stereo 3-D reconstruction framework is outlined that is applicable to nonstereoscopic satellite image pairs that may be captured by different satellites. The orthographic height maps given by stereo reconstruction are compared to height maps given by a multiview approach based on Probabilistic Volumetric Representation (PVR). Height map qualities are measured in comparison to manually prepared ground-truth height maps in three sites from different parts of the world with urban, semi-urban and rural features. The results along with strengths and weaknesses of the two techniques are summarized.