THE EFFECT OF DATA REDUCTION ON IMAGE INTERPRETATION 
by 
N A McEVOY and M H B THOMAS 
LOGICA Ltd, 64 Newman Street, 
London 
England 
ABSTRACT 
With the improvement in the spatial and spectral resolution of sensors, the 
problems of handling very Large quantities of data are becoming increasingly 
acute. À partial solution to this problem is to compress the data. However, 
the process of compression and reconstruction generates eUons in the pixel 
intensities and this will have an effect on user interpretation algorithms. 
The particular compression algorithm we have studied is the Rice Machine 2 
with particular reference to a multispectral scanner obtaining Amagery over 
the sea. The effect of data compression on an atmospheric conrection/chloro- 
phyll concentration algorithm is considered. We conc£ude that data 
compression offers substantial improvement in coverage at the price of 
small but acceptable ewrons in pixel intensities.