Morfologia matemática aplicada à detecção de sombras e nuvens em imagens de alta resolução

The spatial resolution improvement of orbital sensors has broadened considerably the applicability of their images in solving urban areas problems. But as the spatial resolution improves, the shadows become even a more serious problem especially when detailed information (under the shadows) is required. Besides those shadows caused by buildings and houses, clouds projected shadows are likely to occur. In this case there is information occlusion by the cloud in association with low illumination and contrast areas caused by the cloud shadow on the ground. Thus, it's important to use efficient methods to detect shadows and clouds areas in digital images taking in count that these areas care for especial processing. This paper proposes the application of Mathematical Morphology (MM) in shadow and clouds detection. Two parts of a panchromatic QuickBird image of Cuiab-MT urban area were used. The proposed method takes advantage of the fact that shadows (low intensity - dark areas) and clouds (high intensity - bright areas) represent the bottom and top, respectively, of the image as it is thought to be a topographic surface. This characteristic allowed MM area opening and closing operations to be applied to reduce or eliminate the bottom and top of the topographic surface.