In computer science, Orfeo Toolbox (OTB) is a

software library In computing, a library is a collection of resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled functions and classes, or a library can ...

for processing images from

Earth observation satellite An Earth observation satellite or Earth remote sensing satellite is a satellite used or designed for Earth observation (EO) from orbit, including spy satellites and similar ones intended for non-military uses such as environmental monitoring, me ...

s. OTB was initiated by the French space agency (

CNES CNES () is the French national space agency. Headquartered in central Paris, the agency is overseen by the ministries of the Armed Forces, Economy and Finance and Higher Education, Research and Innovation. It operates from the Toulouse Spac ...

) in 2006. The software is released under a free licence; a number of contributors outside CNES are taking part in development and integrating into other projects. The library was originally targeted at high resolution images acquired by the Orfeo

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellati ...

: Pléiades and Cosmo-Skymed, but it also handles other sensors.

Purpose

OTB provides: * Image access: read/write access for most

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an physical object, object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring inform ...

image formats (using

GDAL The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is a computer software library for reading and writing raster and vector geospatial data formats (e.g. shapefile), and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the ...

), meta-data access, visualization * Data access: vector data access (shapefile, kml), DEM model,

lidar Lidar (, also LIDAR, an acronym of "light detection and ranging" or "laser imaging, detection, and ranging") is a method for determining ranging, ranges by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected li ...

data * Filtering: blurring,

denoising Noise reduction is the process of removing noise from a signal. Noise reduction techniques exist for audio and images. Noise reduction algorithms may distort the signal to some degree. Noise rejection is the ability of a circuit to isolate an u ...

, enhancement for optical or radar data * Feature extraction: texture computations including Haralick, SFS, Pantex, Edge density, points of interest, alignments, lines, SIFT, SURF *

Image segmentation In digital image processing and computer vision, image segmentation is the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple image segments, also known as image regions or image objects (Set (mathematics), sets of pixels). The goal of segmen ...

: region growing, watershed, level sets * Classification: K-means, SVM,

Markov random field In the domain of physics and probability, a Markov random field (MRF), Markov network or undirected graphical model is a set of random variables having a Markov property described by an undirected graph In discrete mathematics, particularly ...

s and access to all

OpenCV OpenCV (Open Source Computer Vision Library) is a Library (computing), library of programming functions mainly for Real-time computing, real-time computer vision. Originally developed by Intel, it was later supported by Willow Garage, then Itseez ...

machine learning algorithms The following outline is provided as an overview of, and topical guide to, machine learning: Machine learning (ML) is a subfield of artificial intelligence within computer science that evolved from the study of pattern recognition and computat ...

* Change detection * Stereo reconstruction from images * Orthorectification and map projections (using ossim) *

Radiometric Radiometry is a set of techniques for measuring electromagnetic radiation, including visible light. Radiometric techniques in optics characterize the distribution of the radiation's power in space, as opposed to photometric techniques, which ch ...

indices (vegetation, water, soil) * Object-based segmentation and filtering * PCA computation * Visualization: a flexible visualization system, customizable via plugins;

Languages and interaction with other software

OTB is a C++ library, based on Insight toolkit (ITK). Bindings are developed for Python. A method to use OTB components within IDL/ ENVI has been published. One of the OTB user defined a procedure to use the library capabilities from

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementat ...

. Since late 2009, some modules are developed as processing plugins for

QGIS QGIS is a geographic information system (GIS) software that is free and open-source. QGIS supports Windows, macOS, and Linux. It supports viewing, editing, printing, and analysis of geospatial data in a range of data formats. Its name comes from ...

. Modules for classification, segmentation, hill shading have provided. This effort relies only on volunteers. OTB algorithms were available in QGIS through the processing framework Sextante. Since March 2024, a QGIS plugin is now available in QGIS catalog to work with an installed OTB software.

Applications

Additionally to the library, several applications with GUI are distributed. These application enable interactive segmentation, orthorectification, classification, image registration, etc...

Monteverdi (version 1 and 2)

The OTB-Applications package makes available a set of simple software tools . It supports raster and vector data and integrates most of the already existing OTB applications. The architecture takes advantage of the

streaming Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downl ...

and multi-threading capabilities of the OTB pipeline. It also uses features such as processing on demand and automagic file format I/O. The application is called Monteverdi. In 2013, Monteverdi software was revamped into a new software called Monteverdi2. Since OTB version 9.0 Monterverdi is no longer packaged and supported. However a QGIS plugin allow to use otb application with GUI.

License

OTB was initially distributed under the French Open Source license

CeCILL CeCILL (from CEA CNRS INRIA Logiciel Libre) is a free software license adapted to both international and French legal matters, in the spirit of and retaining compatibility with the GNU General Public License (GPL). It was jointly developed by ...

(similar and compatible with the

GNU GPL The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

) and is now available under the Apache 2.0 license.

History

The development started in January 2006 with the first release in July 2006. The development version is publicly accessible.

Release history

Presentations

OTB has been presented in major conferences across the five continents * IGARSS 2008 in Boston * ISPRS 2008 in Beijing * International Summer School on VHR Remote Sensing 2008 in Grenoble * ESA-EUSC 2008 in

Frascati Frascati () is a city and in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital in the Lazio region of central Italy. It is located south-east of Rome, on the Alban Hills close to the ancient city of Tusculum. Frascati is closely associated with science, ...

* EUSC Software days 2009 in

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

* AUF 2009 in Alger * IGARSS 2009 in

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

for the invited session ''Open Source Initiatives for Remote Sensing - Orfeo Toolbox'' * FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney * Capacity building 2009 in

Antananarivo Antananarivo (Malagasy language, Malagasy: ; French language, French: ''Tananarive'', ), also known by its colonial shorthand form Tana (), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Madagascar. The administrative area of the city, known ...

* Insight Toolkit 2010 Workshop in Washington as a keynote session * IGARSS 2010 in

Honolulu Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...

for a tutorial * FOSS4G 2010 in Barcelona * OGRS 2012 in Yverdon Les Bains According to statistics on Open Hub, there is a total of 95 contributors and almost 402,000 lines of code (this include many libraries upon which OTB is built). OTB in also use for the development of the operational

ground segment A ground segment consists of all the ground-based elements of a spaceflight, space system used by operators and support personnel, as opposed to the Satellite space segment, space segment and user segment. The ground segment enables management of ...

for the VENμS (Vegetation and Environment monitoring on a New Micro Satellite) and the ESA

Sentinel-2 Sentinel-2 is an Earth observation mission from the Copernicus Programme that acquires optical imagery at high spatial resolution (10 m to 60 m) over land and coastal waters. The mission's Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B satellites were joined in or ...

missions.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Orfeo Toolbox C++ libraries Cross-platform software Free computer libraries Remote sensing software