Proceedings Article | 20 August 2001
Christopher Simi, Roberta Dixon, Michael Schlangen, Edwin Winter, Christopher LaSota
KEYWORDS: Calibration, Spectroscopy, Sensors, Detection and tracking algorithms, Short wave infrared radiation, Data processing, Night vision, Software development, Hyperspectral imaging, Image processing
The US Army's Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD) has developed software tools for processing, viewing, and analyzing hyperspectral data. The tools were specifically developed for use with the U.S. Army's NVESD Night Vision Imaging Spectrometer (NVIS), but they can also be used to process hyperspectral data in a variety of other formats. The first of these tools is the NVESD Hyperspectral Data Processor, which is used to create a calibrated datacube from raw hyperspectral data files. It can calibrate raw NVIS data to spectral radiance units, perform spectral re-alignment, and can co-register imagery from NVIS's VNIR and SWIR subsystems. The second tool is the NVESD Hyperspectral Viewer, which can display focal plane data, generate images, and compute spatial and temporal statistics, produce data histograms, estimate spectral correlation, compute signal-to-clutter ratios, etc. Additionally, this software tool has recently been modified to utilize the INS/GPS data that is currently embedded into NVIS data as well as the high-resolution imagery (HRI) that is collected simultaneously. Furthering its capabilities, Technical Research Associates (TRA) has added the following detection algorithms to the Viewer: N-FINDR, PC and MNF Transformations, Spectral Angle Mapper, and R-X. The purpose of these software developments is to provide the DoD and other Government agencies with a variety of tools, which are not only applicable to NVIS data but also can be applied to other hyperspectral data.