What's new about OTB?

Dear all,

CNES is  happy to announce that the Orfeo ToolBox has entered the release candidate stage. The packages for the stable 3.10 release will be available at the end of June. It will coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Orfeo ToolBox library (the release 1.0 was done the 06/30 2006!).

The packages for OTB (Library 3.10, Applications 3.10, Monteverdi 1.8 and Wrapping 1.6) Release Candidate 1 are available here:

• http://www.orfeo-toolbox.org/packages/OrfeoToolbox-3.10.0-RC1.tgz
• http://www.orfeo-toolbox.org/packages/Orfeo-Applications-3.10.0-RC1.tgz
• http://www.orfeo-toolbox.org/packages/Monteverdi-1.8.0-RC1.tgz
• http://www.orfeo-toolbox.org/packages/OTB-Wrapping-1.6.0-RC1.tgz

For MS-Windows users, there are also a binary auto-install packages available for Monterverdi (here), OTB-Applications (here) and OTB-Wrapping (here) !

If you feel like it, you can download them and test the install procedure. Any feedback will be warmly welcomed! There are lots of new features in this release! The list of new main add-ons is available here.

There are exciting new stuffs in all corners of the library. New functionnalities include among other things :

• A new multi-image supervised classification suite in OTB-Applications described here.
• An application to perform segmentation based on connected components and object based image analysis (see description here)

• A framework for cartographic database creation and validation based on the fusion of features in the framework of Dempster-Shafer evidence theory (see description here)

The Monteverdi application is now composed of 42 modules and there are 42+1 applications in OTB-Applications!

The OTB development team also initiated, in addition to the OTB software guide, a guide for OTB-Applications and Monteverdi, dedicated to non-developers. This guide is composed of a brief tour of OTB-Applications and Monteverdi, followed by a set of recipes to perform usual remote sensing tasks with both tools. A first version is already available here.

Please feel free to send your comments, reviews or contributions!

Best regards,

Manuel GRIZONNET, on behalf of OTB development  team.

Hi all,

the OSGeo Live project has just released the version 4.5 of the OSGeo Live GIS software collection, along with a 25 minute video describing the 42 contributing GeoSpatial Open Source applications.

OSGeo-Live is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB flash drive and Virtual Machine based upon Ubuntu Linux that is pre-configured with a wide variety of robust open source geospatial software.

The applications can be trialled without installing anything on your computer, simply by booting the computer from the DVD or USB drive.
This is the first release which integrates the Orfeo ToolBox library. OTB projects distributed in OSGeo are :

• OTB library
• OTB
• Applications
• Monteverdi
• The software guide
• All the datasets needed to perform examples in the software guide.

For each software, there are 2 pages on the OSGeo Live site : an Overview (http://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/otb_overview.html)  and a Quickstart (http://live.osgeo.org/en/quickstart/otb_quickstart.html)
The OTB-Wrapping package is for now not yet integrated in this release, I hope that it could be done for the next OSGeo live release in August 2011.

You can find more informations about the project here : http://live.osgeo.org

Give it a try!

Manuel

We are happy to announce the new 3.8.0 OTB release, codename “Pack Ice”. Simultaneously, we are releasing Monteverdi 1.6, the all-in one user-friendly graphical tool for remote sensing image processing and also a new release of OTB-Applications and OTB-Wrapping projects.

We are also happy to announce that starting 3.8.0, packages are available through online repositories for the 3 last Ubuntu versions as well as for OpenSuse ! These packages include the OTB library, the OTB-Applications and Monteverdi. Java and Python wrapping packages will be available very soon. Our next post will explain how to update your system repositories so as to get the last OTB installed in no time and you can already find details about the procedure on the Download page. For windows users, installers are available for Monteverdi and OTB-Applications and Wrappings. Last novelty, a Monteverdi DMG is available for our Mac users (intel only).

There are numerous improvements to the library :
- Improved local descriptors tools based on ImageFunction :
- Rework FlusserImageFunction and HuImageFunction to output all moments in one pass (FlusserMomentsImageFunction, HuMomentsImageFunction)
- Rework RealMomentsImagefilter and ComplexMomentImageFilter to output a matrix of all moments associated to p, q inferior to a given parameter (ComplexMomentsImageFunction, HuMomentsImageFunction)
- Add image function to compute a vector containing the local mean, variance, skewness and kurtosis (RadiometricMomentsImageFunction)
- Add local histogram image function (LocalHistogramImageFunction)
- Add image function to compute the local Fourier Mellin coefficients (FourierMellinDescriptorsImageFunction)
- Add a class to adapt any image function return types to itk::VariableLengthVector (ImageFunctionAdaptor)
- Add a class to build composite image functions (MetaImageFunction)
- New object detection framework (see also http://wiki.orfeo-toolbox.org/index.php/Object_detection)
- Add filter to generate negative samples (LabeledSampleLocalizationGenerator)
- Add filter to evaluate an image function on a set of point and generate ListSample (DescriptorsListSampleGenerator)
- Add filter to balance the sample number of different classes in a ListSample by generating new samples from existing ones plus noise (ListSampleToBalancedListSampleFilter, GaussianAdditiveNoiseSampleListFilter)
- Add filter to apply a shift/scale to a ListSample (ShiftScaleSampleListFilter)
- Add filter to detect object from an SVM model and an image function (ObjectDetectionClassifier)
- SVMClassifier: add hyperplanes distances as output
- GDALImageIO: support writing of non-streamable format (JPEG, PNG)
- Support reading vector images of std::complex
- BandMathFilter: add physical and image coordinates variables

Monteverdi 1.8 comes with 3 new modules and 2 modules improvements :
- Monteverdi
- New Polarimetric Synthesis module
- New DEM image extraction / HillShading module: creates an image from a DEM tiles directory, with optional hillshading
- New ColorMapping module: apply a colormap to a mono band image
- Viewer module: add multi input support, with slideshow or transparency mode, add more rendering functions, add splitted/packed layout option
- Vectorization module: new semi-automatic mode based on segmentation results proposals.

Regarding the OTB-Applications package, it has been completely revamped and offers the following new features:
- Object Detection applications (see also http://wiki.orfeo-toolbox.org/index.php/Object_detection)
- EstimateFeatureStatistics to evaluate descriptors statistics on a set of images
- TrainObjectDetector: generates an SVM model from input images and a vector data
- ObjectDetector: detects points in an image from an SVM model
- Add automatically generated GUI wrappers for OTB processing chains
- Add FLTK wrapper
- Add a generic Qt based widget class
- Add a Qt GUI wrapper based on the generic Qt widget
- Add a Qgis plugin wrapper based on the generic Qt widget

The OTB Software Guide has also been updated and is now 700 pages long.

Also, the otb-developers mailing list announced with the 3.6 release is a great success: we had lots of registrations, with very interesting contributions to the project development. Many thanks to the contributors !

On behalf of the OTB development team, we wish you a merry christmas and an happy new year,

The OTB library and the interactive software Monteverdi were at the center of a workshop organized by the National Committee of Remote Sensing of Madagascar from November 17th to 20th, 2010.

The French Space Agency (CNES) in collaboration with the French Institute for Research and Development are helping to the development of the use of remote sensing data by getting access to images (Spot) but also by providing tools to manipulate these data.

In 2009, for the first course in Antananarivo, Monteverdi was developed. The software is based on OTB and gives access to lots of functionalities through an interactive and modular structure. It gets access to a wide variety of technical modules and takes advantage of streaming and multi-threading capabilities of the library. We received a lot of interesting feedback after the course, requests for the implementation of new functionalities grew steadily and so the development of Monteverdi continued during 2010.

On the other hand, Monteverdi is a “young” software which could be improved but it is a step to help the development of a pragmatic and interactive tool to manage the use of remote sensing data. A tutorial was just organised on this subject at the IGARSS conference in 2010 in Honolulu.

The second course in Antananarivo, two weeks ago, was the occasion to capitalize on concepts learnt in 2009 and was also the occasion to present new functionalities developed during the last 12 months. The courses covered a large scope of the main remote sensing processes available in Monteverdi. From basic operations to the practical use of the Change detection framework or of the optical calibration module based on the radiative transfer code 6S.

One more time Monteverdi proves its abilities as a support for technical courses because it can cover a large scope of the principal tasks needed by a user of remote sensing data. From geometric processing like the orthorectification module to Feature extraction, segmentation or supervised classification.

It also appears that some new modules added in 2010 get a lot of success and are a progress in the right direction. For example, the Band Math module which allows to perform generic mathematical operations between image layers.

Moreover, this kind of tutorials are also an excellent way to get immediate feedbacks and reactions about the software and to get a direct interaction with end users:

-Is there a module to perform Object based classification in Monteverdi ( notably for VHR data)? YES, have a look to the Object labeling module

-Is it possible to save/load process chain in Monteverdi? For now no, but we will work on it…

-Is it possible to apply a process to a masked region of the input image?

-Is it possible to remove results from the data tree in Monteverdi? NO (but it is feasible)

The vast majority of students’ questions or problems often point out really interesting feature requests and as a consequence are the beginning of the roadmap of the software.

There are also more general questions about the software:

-How to increase the ergonomy and the user experience of Monteverdi?

-How can we generalize the integration in Monteverdi of existing OTB filters for non developers?

-How to achieve a seamless integration and collaboration between OTB and existing Open Source tools?

One more time the course was also a proof of the value of Open Source principles: for example the combination of Open Data over Madagascar available through the Open Street Map project and open source software able to use it efficiently like Monteverdi.

The idea is not to believe in a “techno-utopia” where information technology could eliminate poverty and inverse difficult solutions. Information technology and Open Source software increase capabilities but are dependent on the fact that they need users which are ready and able to use them.

I hope that this event was as much as valuable for the students that it was fot me and for the future of OTB.

Soon a “Coming next” article about recent improvements in the collaboration between OTB and Quantum GIS…

When processing your images and building up your cutting-edge processing chain with OTB, the need arises to do simple arithmetic operations between the different bands of your images : substracting two bands to study the image differences, threshold the image, apply conditional filtering rule or perform a logarithmic rescaling for example. It requires the use of several basic operation filters, such as itk::SubtractImageFilter, for each and every operand you want to apply. The brand new BandMathImageFilter provides a simpler and more efficient way to perform complex mathematical operations over n images. It is based on the mathematical parser library muParser and comes with a bunch of build-in functions and operators (listed here). This homebrewed digital calculator is also bundled with custom functions allowing to compute a full expression result simply and really fast, since the filter supports streaming and multi-threading.

This new functionality has also been included into the Monteverdi application to provide a intuitive way to perform complex band computation the easy way. The module also prevents error in the mathematical command by checking the expression as the user types it, and notifying information on the detected error:

The new Monteverdi Band Math module showing syntax error on mathematical expression.

Correct mathematical expressions are highlighted in green.

This feature is already available in the release 3.6 of the Orfeo Toolbox.

Give it a try!