Orfeo toolbox
Encyclopedia
Orfeo Toolbox is a library for remote sensing image processing. The project had been initiated by the French space agency (CNES
) in 2006 and is under heavy developments and the participation from the open source community is currently growing. The goal is to provide potential users of satellite images with all the tools necessary to use these images. The library is originally targeted at high resolution images acquired by the Orfeo constellation: Pleiades satellites
and Cosmo-Skymed but also handles a wide variety of sensors.
OTB provides:
The library is intensively tested on several platforms as Linux, Unix and Windows (Visual and Cygwin) OTB Dashboard. Most functions are also adapted to process huge images (>4GB) using streaming and to take advantages of multicore processor as often as possible.
The library have an extensive documentation for both API (OTB API) and illustrated capabilities in the Software Guide (html version).
(ITK), a medical image processing library.
Bindings are developed for Python
and Java
and are available as the separate OTB-Wrapping project. A blog post on the orfeo-toolbox blog details an example using the python wrapping
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
.
Since late 2009 , some modules are developed as processing plugins for Quantum GIS
. Modules for classification, segmentation, hill shading have provided. This effort has not been funded so far and relies only on volunteers.
It supports raster and vector data and integrates most of the already existing OTB applications. The architecture takes advantage of the streaming and multi-threading capabilities of the OTB pipeline. It also uses cool features as processing on demand and automagic file format I/O. The application is called Monteverdi, since this is the name of the Orfeo composer.This is also in memory of the great (and once open source) Khoros/Cantata software.
(similar and compatible with GPL).
Many of those presentations are publicly available
According to statistics on ohloh , there is a total of 21 contributors and almost 6 million lines of code (this include many libraries upon which OTB is built).
OTB in also use for the development of the operational ground segment for the Venus (Vegetation & Environment new micro satellite) mission .
CNES
The is the French government space agency . Established under President Charles de Gaulle in 1961, its headquarters are located in central Paris and it is under the supervision of the French Ministries of Defence and Research...
) in 2006 and is under heavy developments and the participation from the open source community is currently growing. The goal is to provide potential users of satellite images with all the tools necessary to use these images. The library is originally targeted at high resolution images acquired by the Orfeo constellation: Pleiades satellites
Pleiades satellites
The Pléiades constellation is composed of two very-high-resolution optical Earth-imaging satellites. Pléiades 1 and Pléiades 2 will provide coverage of Earth’s surface with a repeat cycle of 26 days ....
and Cosmo-Skymed but also handles a wide variety of sensors.
OTB provides:
- Image access: read/write access for most remote sensing image formats (using GDALGDALGDAL is a library for reading and writing raster geospatial data formats, and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats...
), meta-data access, visualization - Data access: vector data access (shapefile, kml), DEM model, lidar data
- Filtering: blurring, denoising, enhancement for optical or radar data
- Feature extraction: texture computations including Haralick, SFS, Pantex, Edge density, points of interest, alignments, lines, SIFTScale-invariant feature transformScale-invariant feature transform is an algorithm in computer vision to detect and describe local features in images. The algorithm was published by David Lowe in 1999....
, SURFSURFSURF is a robust image detector & descriptor, first presented by Herbert Bay et al. in 2006, that can be used in computer vision tasks like object recognition or 3D reconstruction. It is partly inspired by the SIFT descriptor... - Image segmentation: region growing, watershed, level sets
- Classification: K-means, SVM, Markov random fields
- Change detection
- Orthorectification and map projections (using ossim)
- Radiometric indices (vegetation, water, soil)
- Object-based segmentation and filtering
- PCA computation
- Visualization: a flexible visualization system, customizable via plugins;
- and more.
The library is intensively tested on several platforms as Linux, Unix and Windows (Visual and Cygwin) OTB Dashboard. Most functions are also adapted to process huge images (>4GB) using streaming and to take advantages of multicore processor as often as possible.
The library have an extensive documentation for both API (OTB API) and illustrated capabilities in the Software Guide (html version).
Languages and interaction with other softwares
OTB is a C++ library, based on Insight toolkitInsight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit
ITK is a cross-platform, open-source application development framework widely used for the development of image segmentation and image registration programs. Segmentation is the process of identifying and classifying data found in a digitally sampled representation. Typically the sampled...
(ITK), a medical image processing library.
Bindings are developed for Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
and Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
and are available as the separate OTB-Wrapping project. A blog post on the orfeo-toolbox blog details an example using the python wrapping
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
MATLAB is a numerical computing environment and fourth-generation programming language. Developed by MathWorks, MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages,...
.
Since late 2009 , some modules are developed as processing plugins for Quantum GIS
Quantum GIS
Quantum GIS is a free software desktop Geographic Information Systems application that provides data viewing, editing, and analysis capabilities.-Development:...
. Modules for classification, segmentation, hill shading have provided. This effort has not been funded so far and relies only on volunteers.
Applications
Additionally to the library, several applications with GUI are distributed in the OTB-Applications package. These application enable interactive segmentation, orthorectification, classification, image registration, etc.Monteverdi
The OTB-Applications package makes available a set of simple software tools which were designed to demonstrates what can be done with OTB. Many users started using these applications for real processing tasks, so we tried to make them more generic, more robust and easy to use.It supports raster and vector data and integrates most of the already existing OTB applications. The architecture takes advantage of the streaming and multi-threading capabilities of the OTB pipeline. It also uses cool features as processing on demand and automagic file format I/O. The application is called Monteverdi, since this is the name of the Orfeo composer.This is also in memory of the great (and once open source) Khoros/Cantata software.
License
OTB is distributed under a free software license CeCILLCeCILL
CeCILL 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....
(similar and compatible with GPL).
History
The development started in January 2006 with the first release in July 2006 . Since that time, 12 new releases were published (average of 3 per year). The development version is publicly accessible .Release history
| Version | Codename | Release date | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0.0 | June 30, 2006 | ||
| 1.2.0 | February, 2007 | ||
| 1.4.0 | June, 2007 | ||
| 1.6.0 | October, 2007 | ||
| 2.0.0 | December, 2007 | ||
| 2.2.0 | June, 2008 | ||
| 2.4.0 | July, 2008 | ||
| 2.6.0 | Halloween | November, 2008 | |
| 2.8.0 | 恭喜发财 (Gong Xi Fa Cai) | January, 2009 | |
| 3.0.0 | Manhã de Carnaval | May, 2009 | |
| 3.2.0 | 62°38'35" S 60°14'31" W | January, 2010 | |
| 3.4.0 | Perl A Rebours | July, 2010 | |
| 3.6.0 | California Dreamin' | October 07, 2010 | |
| 3.8.0 | Pack Ice | December 17, 2010 | |
| 3.10.0 | Feliç aniversari | June 30, 2011 |
Presentations
As of October 2009, 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
- EUSC Software dasy 2009 in Madrid
- AUF 2009 in Alger
- IGARSS 2009 in Cape Town for the invited session Open Source Initiatives for Remote Sensing - Orfeo Toolbox
- FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney
- Capacity building 2009 in Antananarivo
- Insight Toolkit 2010 Workshop in Washington as a keynote session
- IGARSS 2010 in Honolulu for a tutorial
- FOSS4G 2010 in Barcelona
Many of those presentations are publicly available
According to statistics on ohloh , there is a total of 21 contributors and almost 6 million lines of code (this include many libraries upon which OTB is built).
OTB in also use for the development of the operational ground segment for the Venus (Vegetation & Environment new micro satellite) mission .