International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B1. Istanbul 2004 
  
The absence of grain in the digital image and the high 
radiometric performance e.g. at shadow areas offers the ability 
of dense and reliable automatic DEM data extraction. 
5. MULTISPECTRAL SENSING 
One important benefit of some digital cameras is the 
multispectral capability. UltraCamD offers such simultaneously 
sensing of high resolution panchromatic information and 
additional multispectral —thus red, green, blue and near infrared 
(NIR)- information. The method to combine panchromatic and 
multispectral subimages is known as the “pansharpen” method. 
The output image of such sensor can then be a high resolution 
true color image or a high resolution false color infrared image. 
The benefit of the multispectral sensing is obviously the 
simultaneous recording of all bands, i.e. any classification can 
be performed without cumbersome registration of different 
scenes. Additional ideas about photogrammetric color sensing 
may be found in [Leberl et al., 2002]. 
  
Fig. 4) Panchromatic high resolution image (left) and four 
multispectral channels (right) built the source data set of 
UltraCamD. 
6. WORKFLOW ISSUES 
The remaining analog gap of the end-to-end photogrammetric 
workflow has been closed by the digital large format aerial 
camera. 
This leads to a new way of data handling, archiving and data 
retrival. No longer manual interaction with cut film sheets or 
uncut rolls of film but computer controlled digital archives will 
help to manage huge amounts of digital data. 
The digital images from digital aerial cameras need to fit into 
such archiving systems but also into the traditional workflow of 
the existing photogrammetric production. 
By principle, the UltraCam-D data flow will dovetail with an 
existing softcopy photogrammetric operation. The modular 
setup of the UltraCam-D approach supports a flexible 
connection with a customer’s preferred data management 
arrangements. There are four levels of image data: 
Level 00 Raw image segments read out from each CCD, 
redundancy by mirroring 
Level 0 Verified image segments, no redundant storage 
Level 1 Image segments radiometrically corrected and 
rearranged for efficient stitching 
Level 2 Stitched (i.e. geometrically and radiometrically 
clean), color held separately 
Level 3 Final color (false color IR) pansharpened image 
product 
Raw level-00 aerial digital photography gets collected on 
board the survey plane onto the disk and CPU arrangement (the 
SCU). A storage volume of 1.5 Tbyte is available with the basic 
UltraCam-D configuration. Half of the storage is for the 
collected image segments, the other half is used to mirror each 
image onto a duplicate set of disks. Upon completion of a flight 
mission and some preprocessing into level 0 or level 2 on board 
the survey plane, the images are being transferred from the on- 
board SCU onto a mobile storage unit (MSU). This consists 
simply of a set of 14 HDDs and has the ability to receive an 
entire set of Level 0 image data from the SCU within about 1 
hour. 
The SCU is itself also *mobile" and can be moved from the 
plane to optionally perform the function of a "ground 
processing system". Transfer of the digital data to the home 
office is via the MSU. 
The camera system will be ready to fly on a daily basis, since 
processing the collected data and transferring them off the plane 
can be achieved sufficiently quickly for a survey flight to 
resume the next day. 
7. CONCLUSIONS 
The large format digital aerial camera will clearly close the last 
remaining analog gap of the all digital photogrammetric 
workflow. This is reason to figure out the novel abilities of such 
new source data production. 
We have focused on four major advantages of the digital 
system, 1) the ability to produce a higher overlap, up to 90 96 
along track, without additional expenses for film, 2) the absence 
of grain noise and therefore a much higher quality in DTM 
production, 3) the ability of simultaneously multispectral 
sensing and 4) the all digital workflow with its inherent 
benefits. 
These and other specific advantages of the digital camera may 
be reason enough to foresee a fruitful impact of this new 
instrument, or, more enthusiastic, foresee a remarkable change 
of the photogrammetric landscape, combining enhanced 
productivity, higher degree of automation and more robustness. 
8. REFERENCES 
Leberl F., R. Perko, M. Gruber, M. Ponticelli (2002) Novel 
Concepts for Aerial Digital Cameras. ISPRS Archives, Volume 
34, Part 1, Proceedings of the ISPRS Commission I 
Symposium, Denver, Colorado, November 2002. 
Leberl F., M. Gruber, M. Ponticelli (2003) Flying the new large 
format digital aerial camera UltraCam. Proceedings of the 
Photogrammetric Week 2003, Stuttgart, 2003. 
Leberl, F. et al. (2002): Color in photogrammetric remote 
sensing, Proceedings of the ISPRS Commission VII 
Symposium, XiAn, China, August 2002. 
Leberl, F. et al. (2003): The UltraCam Large Format Aerial 
Digital Camera System, Proceedings of the American Society 
For Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing, 5-9 May, 2003, 
Anchorage, Alaska 
   
   
    
     
    
    
   
    
    
    
     
     
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
     
   
   
   
   
    
    
      
   
   
      
    
    
   
    
    
   
    
   
   
   
    
   
    
     
   
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