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CUSTOM IMAGE PROCESSING CAPABILITIES IN ARCGIS 
Hong Xu a , Peng Gao b 
a ESRI, Raster Product Engineer Lead, 380 New York Street, Redlands, CA91765 - hxu@esri.com 
b ESRI, Raster Development Lead, 380 New York Street, Redlands,-CA91765 - pgao@esri.com 
Commission IV, WG IV/2 
KEY WORDS: GIS, Raster, Remote Sensing, Transformation, Geometry, Radiometry, Programming, Open System 
ABSTRACT: 
The traditional workflow of using remote sensing images in GIS applications is to acquire or purchase processed images and then use 
these “ready” images in GIS software. As the development of remote sensing technology, more and more sensors have been invented 
and are producing imagery with various camera models. Both imagery providers and GIS software companies are working on 
providing ways to make these imagery products available to wide varieties of GIS users in a timely fashion. This paper presents the 
open structure in ArcGIS, the commercial GIS software, that allows third parties to add custom image processing functionality to 
ArcGIS. With this open structure, ArcGIS software provides a platform that brings remote sensing and GIS application together. The 
paper will discuss in details the image processing capabilities in ArcGIS and the open structure that supports custom geodata 
transformations, custom pixel filters, and custom raster format into ArcGIS. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
ArcGIS, the leading GIS software for managing geospatial data, 
provides functionality in raster data storage and management, 
image processing, image visualization, and image serving over 
the web. This combination of capabilities provides a complete 
solution for government agencies, the military, private 
companies, and many other parties to build various GIS and 
geospatial applications. 
First, ArcGIS supports more than 40 existing raster formats and 
can store large seamless image mosaics in an enterprise 
geodatabase and a File geodatabase that any other existing 
raster format can not offer. Developers can also add any new 
raster format support into ArcGIS. These capabilities have laid 
a solid foundation for building geospatial applications with 
various image data; Secondly, ArcGIS provides many raster 
renderering capabilities that can display various types of raster 
data; Thirdly, ArcGIS provides rich raster processing tools for 
raster analysis and image processing such as creating a slope or 
creating an hillshade image from DEM, generating a pan- 
sharpened image, georeferencing an image, creating 
orthorectified images from QuickBird and IKONOS’s basic 
image products, and so on. Lastly, the ArcGIS server products 
allow users to serve imagery through intranet and internet, 
providing image services to more users. 
As the development of GIS and remote sensing technologies 
improve, the demand for imagery as GIS data sources also 
increases. More image sensors have been developed and are 
producing imagery for various GIS applications (Tao, 2001, 
Altimarier, 2002, Toutin, and Wolniewicz et al), and each 
sensor might have its own proprietary camera model and/or 
image processing algorithms. Making these images available to 
vast GIS users using a fast and convenient way becomes critical 
for both GIS users and image companies. ArcGIS, as a 
complete system for managing geospatial data, has not only the 
capabilities to mange, visualize, process and serve images, but 
also provides an open structure for developers or third parties to 
add their own algorithms for image processing including 
geometric transformation and radiometric transformation. Any 
third parties can create their own extensions or custom plug-ins 
to support custom camera model and custom pixel filtering 
algorithms, taking advantages of the powerful ArcGIS 
capabilities in image management, mapping and raster analysis. 
2. GEOMETRIC TRANSFORMATION SUPPORT IN 
ARCGIS 
ArcGIS software supports many types of geometric 
transformations. The Georeferencing toolbar in ArcGIS allows 
users to georeferencing image with three geometric 
transformation types: polynomial transformation which includes 
1 st , 2 nd , and 3 rd polynomial, rubber sheeting transformation, and 
Spline transformation. ArcGIS’s raster projection engine 
provides a fast and accurate algorithm for re-projecting images 
to various projections including the complicated Cube and 
Fuller projections. 
ArcGIS also supports reading and processing images with RPC 
camera model. Starting from 9.2 release, ArcGIS software, 
supports RPC camera model from the basic image products of 
QuickBird and IKONOS. The RPC information is read and 
applied directly when the image is accessed or displayed in 
ArcGIS (Figure 1). Further more, by applying DEM, ArcGIS 
can produce orthorectified image from these products (Figure 2, 
and Figure 3).