Radiometric correction and equalization of satellite digital data

Satellite digital data from Landsat and NOAA satellites is often marred by striping or streaking errors due to variations in the response of the radiometric sensors. In this paper, we discuss the equalization of the digital data as a preprocessing step, prior to image enhancement or automatic classification. The methods described make use of statistics of the data itself to generate nonlinear or linear memory-less equalization algorithms. These algorithms, by contrast to multidimensional filtering, do not result in a loss of spatial resolution. Examples of applications to Landsat and NOAA-3 thermal infrared data are given and illustrated.