A Concept for the Processing and Display of Thematic Mapper Data

The thematic mapper system provides spectral information in seven carefully selected spectral bands. The challenge is to devise the best approach for presenting this complex spectral information in a pictorial format which can be understood and accepted as a standard by the growing user community. For photointerpretation purposes, the overall approach in the processing of multispectral, and especially of Thematic Mapper data is based on the Independent definition and optimization of individual panchromatic and spectral (interpretive) components and the combined display of these individual interpretive components in a perceivable manner. Processing of the Thematic Mapper data within the framework of interpretive components requires the application of special intensity, hue, saturation (IHS) and synthetic stereo (SST) display techniques. The results to date using these techniques demonstrate improved visual separability of spectral surface categories relative to standard multispectral color composites as well as a greater potential for conducting meaningful spectral-diagnostic analysis.