Disparity map estimation based on optimization algorithms using satellite stereo imagery

The monitoring of trees and vegetation near high voltage transmission power lines is a tedious job for electrical companies. There are many blackouts occur due to interfering the trees with the power transmission lines in hilly as well as urban areas. This is a big challenge for power distribution companies to monitor the vegetation for avoiding the blackouts and flashovers. To solve these problems, there are many methods are used to monitor the trees and vegetation near transmission power poles. But the existing methods are expensive and time consuming. We proposed the new method based on satellite images to monitor the trees and vegetation. The satellite images provide the cost effective solution to solve the monitoring problem. In this paper, we proposed the stereo matching algorithms to measure the disparity map based on satellite stereo imagery. The height estimation of trees and vegetation near power poles based on depth map which is inversely proportional of the disparity map. For measuring the depth map, the dynamic programming (DP) and block matching with energy minimization has been proposed. These techniques are applied on the satellite stereo images and based on results, our proposed DP algorithm produced more accurate disparity map as compared to the block matching algorithm.