Workshop Descriptions

EARTH: Pixoneer Software for Remote Sensing Education
Dr. Mohamed Mohamed
The purpose of the workshop is to introduce and discuss a remote sensing class curriculum using EARTH software by Pixoneer. This course provides an introduction to electromagnetic spectrum, basic spectral properties of earth surface features, energy interaction with the atmosphere, and spectral response patterns of surface features. It also provides an overview of electro-optical remote sensing systems including airborne and space-borne photographic cameras, multi-spectral, thermal, and hyper-spectral sensors. The emphasis is on digital data formats and characteristics, as well as background on photogrammetric procedures and techniques used in image rectification, image enhancement, image classification, and integration of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS).

Organization and Visualization of Large Datasets in Remote Sensing Digital Libraries
Dr. K. Palaniappan and Joshua Fraser
Two visualization software tools will be described - the DISS and Kolam and hands-on examples of working with large datasets will be demonstrated. The Distributed Image SpreadSheet (DISS) is an interactive scientific visualization and analysis tool that provides a novel gridded multiwindow interface for constructing, organizing, and intercomparing gigabyte-sized datasets. The DISS provides convenient networked storage access to remote sensing digital libraries. Highly interactive visual browsing tools, such as multicell synchronized animation, roam and zoom, stereoscopic display, navigated data probing, surface rendering, flightpaths and volume visualization for interacting with arbitrary-sized multidimensional data in each frame of the DISS have been demonstrated for quickly inspecting thousands of separate datasets. A unique DISS capability is to rapidly and smoothly zoom, roam, animate and execute functions in synchrony for a large set of 2-D or 3-D data cells.

Kolam is a tool for visualizing remote sensing datasets that are tens of gigabytes in size with hardware-independent support for adaptive compression and tiled image pyramid organization. Kolam uses out-of-core visualization methods and a novel lightweight quad-bundle data structure for accessing and displaying large 2D datasets, without using hardware clip-textures or building a complete hierarchical clip-map. Kolam uses multithreading, a novel cache management scheme, and is very efficient in terms of texture loading, since the entire viewport clip hierarchy is not updated. Kolam provides an electronic softcopy or light table capability for very large datasets that can scale to hundreds of gigabytes. Kolam is being used for visualizing global multichannel MODIS mosaics with multiple layers that show seasonal variations, global lights, landcover, snow and ice cover, cloud cover, etc. Kolam can perform on the fly mosaicing of orthorectified DOQ imagery and display embedded Landsat and statewide land cover data. Kolam is being enhanced for high pixel density output for supporting collaborative display wall capabilities.

TeraScan Operations
Mr. Mike Crowley
Workshop topics will include but not limited to satellite, sensor, and telemetry overview, TeraVision GUI for viewing and manipulating processed satellite images, TeraMaster GUI for defining an area of interest for your images and daily operating procedures of the TeraScan system, including TeraCapCon and TeraTrackeye for pass scheduling and capture, updating orbital elements; retrieving and installing software patches; archiving data; TeraScan Log Viewer for diagnosing and troubleshooting problems with data capture.