In computer science, Orfeo Toolbox (OTB) is a

software library In computer science, a library is a collection of non-volatile resources used by computer programs, often for software development. These may include configuration data, documentation, help data, message templates, pre-written code and sub ...

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, ...

s. OTB was initiated by the French space agency (

CNES The (CNES; French: ''Centre national d'études spatiales'') is the French government space agency (administratively, a "public administration with industrial and commercial purpose"). Its headquarters are located in central Paris and it is und ...

) 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 Image resolution is the detail an image holds. The term applies to digital images, film images, and other types of images. "Higher resolution" means more image detail. Image resolution can be measured in various ways. Resolution quantifies how cl ...

images acquired by the Orfeo

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the earliest constellation ...

: Pléiades and

Cosmo-Skymed COSMO-SkyMed (COnstellation of small Satellites for the Mediterranean basin Observation) is an Earth-observation satellite space-based radar system funded by the Italian Ministry of Research and Ministry of Defence and conducted by the Ita ...

, 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 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 information about Ear ...

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 Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

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

lidar Lidar (, also LIDAR, or LiDAR; sometimes LADAR) is a method for determining ranges (variable distance) by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected light to return to the receiver. It can also be ...

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 und ...

, 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 ( sets of pixels). The goal of segmentation is to simpli ...

: 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 other words, a random field is said to b ...

s and access to all

OpenCV OpenCV (''Open Source Computer Vision Library'') is a library of programming functions mainly aimed at real-time computer vision. Originally developed by Intel, it was later supported by Willow Garage then Itseez (which was later acquired by In ...

machine learning algorithms The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to machine learning. Machine learning is a subfield of soft computing within computer science that evolved from the study of pattern recognition and computational learning ...

* Change detection *

Stereo reconstruction In computer vision and computer graphics, 3D reconstruction is the process of capturing the shape and appearance of real objects. This process can be accomplished either by active or passive methods. If the model is allowed to change its shape ...

from images *

Orthorectification An orthophoto, orthophotograph, orthoimage or orthoimagery is an aerial photograph or satellite imagery geometrically corrected ("orthorectified") such that the scale is uniform: the photo or image follows a given map projection. Unlike an ...

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 ...

indices (vegetation, water, soil) * Object-based segmentation and filtering * PCA computation *

Visualization Visualization or visualisation may refer to: * Visualization (graphics), the physical or imagining creation of images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message * Data visualization, the graphic representation of data * Information visuali ...

: a flexible visualization system, customizable via plugins;

Languages and interaction with other software

OTB is a

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

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 free and open-source cross-platform desktop geographic information system (GIS) application that supports viewing, editing, printing, and analysis of geospatial data. Functionality QGIS functions as geographic information system (GIS) ...

. Modules for classification, segmentation, hill shading have provided. This effort relies only on volunteers. OTB algorithms are now available in QGIS through the processing framework Sextante.

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 is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content i ...

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.

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 License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

) 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 ''comune'' 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 wit ...

* EUSC Software days 2009 in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

* AUF 2009 in Alger * IGARSS 2009 in

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

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

Antananarivo Antananarivo ( French: ''Tananarive'', ), also known by its colonial shorthand form Tana, is the capital and largest city of Madagascar. The administrative area of the city, known as Antananarivo-Renivohitra ("Antananarivo-Mother Hill" or "A ...

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

Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the isla ...

for a tutorial * FOSS4G 2010 in Barcelona * OGRS 2012 in Yverdon Les Bains According to statistics on

Open Hub Black Duck Open Hub, formerly Ohloh, is a website which provides a web services suite and online community platform that aims to index the open-source software development community. It was founded by former Microsoft managers Jason Allen and ...

, there is a total of 83 contributors and almost 925,000 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 space system used by operators and support personnel, as opposed to the space segment and user segment. The ground segment enables management of a spacecraft, and distribution of pay ...

for the

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

(Vegetation & Environment new micro satellite) and the ESA

Sentinel-2 Sentinel-2 is an Earth observation mission from the Copernicus Programme that systematically acquires optical imagery at high spatial resolution (10 m to 60 m) over land and coastal waters. The mission is currently a constellation with two satel ...

missions.

References

External links

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