ROADWAY EXTRACTION IN URBAN AREAS USING

SATELLITE IMAGERY
Abstract: Satellite imagery is an important
source for the acquisition and update of GIS
data. In this paper the semi-automatic
extraction of roads from satellite imagery is
proposed. To extract the road from urban areas
an effective edge detection algorithm based
atershed transform is proposed to yield
satisfactory and efficient segmentation of the
aerial images for edge detection. The high-
resolution images are preferable due to use of
idth and variance information for road
extraction. This algorithm or!s successfully
for straight roads and roads having "unctions#
minimum obstacles and detects central line of
the roads in any orientation by setting proper
threshold for satellite images.
Index terms$ road extraction# %ultispectral
Satellite Images# segmentation# distance
transform
I. Introduction
The automatic road extraction is
primarily needed by Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) applications, since manual data
acquisition for GIS database update is a costly
and time consuming task. GIS applications hae
a !ide area of usage including defense industry,
transportation systems, urban planning and
naigation traffic regulation, emergency
management, and so on. "oads are important
components for these applications. The main of
this pro#ect is to high resolution satellite images
for automatic road extraction to get accurate and
detailed road map.
$ large number of automatic and semi%
automatic approaches hae been deeloped for
the analysis of transportation infrastructure in
satellite images. &anny edge detection, 'ough
transform, morphological operations are some of
the techniques used earlier in road detection
studies ((hao et. al, )**)+ ,ang et. al, )**-+
.andana et. al.,)**)+ (hang et. al., /000). Semi%
$utomatic road extraction algorithm for high
resolution images, using path follo!ing approach
Shukla et al. ()**)), red band has been used to
find the roads, and then !atershed transform has
been applied. In addition, cure ad#acency graph
has been constructed on !atershed result. 1astly,
2arko random fields hae been used for road
net!ork extraction from this graph (G3raud 4
2ouret, ()**5). Steger et al. (/00-) proposed a
model%based road%extraction method, !hich
classifies kno!ledge geometry, radiometry,
topology, and context. 'in6 and 7aumgartner
()**8) presented an approach for automatic
extraction of urban road net!orks from multi%
ie! aerial imagery. In the research of road
extraction, Trinder and 1i (/00-) described a
semi%automatic method of feature extraction
based on the actie contour or 9snakes:.
There are seeral approaches for road
extraction is discussed aboe. In this paper a ne!
algorithm edge detection !ith the combination of
!atershed segmentation using distance transform
is proposed to extract the roads from aerial image
!ith high resolutions by using semi%automated
methods. In order to detect the roads edge
detection filters !hich are the types of high pass
filters (Sobel) are conducted to satellite images
haing different high resolution. In this !ay
spatial frequency of each image !as increased so
the roads !ere highlighted and then extracted
from each image. Some pictures may be ery
noisy and image processing becomes more and
more complex due to this the markers selection
and extraction are not so easy. In other cases, the
ob#ects to be detected may be so complex and so
aried in shape, grey leel and si6e that it is ery
hard to find reliable algorithms enabling their
extraction. ;or that reason segmentation of image
is needed. ;ortunately, the !atershed transform
itself, applied on another leel, !ill help us to
merge the fragmented regions. Indeed, the
boundaries produced by the segmentation do not
hae the same !eight. Those !hich are inside the
almost homogeneous regions are !eaker. In
order to compare these boundaries, !e hae to
introduce neighbourhood relations bet!een them.
The !atershed transform presents some
adantages<
= The !atershed lines al!ays correspond
to the most significant edges bet!een the
markers. So this technique is not affected by
lo!er%contrast edges, due to noise, that could
produce local minima and, thus, erroneous
results, in energy minimi6ation methods.
= >en if there are no strong edges
bet!een the markers, the !atershed transform
al!ays detects a contour in the area. This contour
!ill be located on the pixels !ith higher contrast
The flo! of this paper is organi6ed as
follo!s. In Section II, the "oad >xtraction
methodology is detailed. The results are sho!n in
Section III. Section I. and Section . are about
conclusion, discussion and future enhancement
of the !ork.
II. Road Extraction Metodo!o"#
A. Data
The satellite images from Google >arth !ith
aerial ie! images are used in this study to
extract roads and analy6e the contribution of
spectral bands. The Google >arth satellite images
a proide medium%high resolution imagery
greater than /%meter per pixel !hich are used in
this paper is sho!n in ;igure/.

$i".% In&ut I'a"e
B. A!"orit'
"oads hae different characteristic in
urban and rural regions. They may be also
composed of different surface materials.
?roposed methods hae high performance for
specific region and area. In order to hae high
road extraction performance for both rural and
urban area, it is required to deelop a modular
approach for road extraction algorithm.
The technique used in our study consists
of f main modules (;igure )). 2ainly the first
step is to apply preprocessing techniques that
includes reducing the noise and ad#ust the image
intensity by presering image information in it.
The noisy images lead to oer segmentation and
not an accurate segmented image.
The first step is the rgb to gray
conersion and then the dimensional reduction is
done using !aelet transform
Then the next step is 'istogram
equali6ation !hich is done for contrast
ad#ustment. Then noise is remoed from the
image by filtering process and pixel alues are
ad#usted so that they !ill help to obtain the !ell
segmented image.
The next step is pre segmentation
processes that includes arious morphological
operations such as finding out regional maxima
and mark the foreground ob#ects that help in
segmentation process. Then after marking the
foreground ob#ects reconstruct the image.
In the third step the main task is
segmentation. $fter reconstructing the image !e
superimpose it !ith the original image, clean the
edges of the segmented image and compute
background markers.
The last step is to apply !atershed
transformation to the distance transform of the
image and then see the result that is segmented
image.
$i".(. $!o) cart o* te a!"orit'
C. Con+er,ion To Gra# Sca!e I'a"e
The memory space needed for a color
image is relatiely more since it requires red,
green and blue color matrices !ith different
intensity alues. 7ut in gray scale only the
intensity a alue ranging from * to )-@ is stored
as a single matrix. This causes less memory
space leading to less computational effort.
D. Di,crete Wa+e!et, Tran,*or'
;or image processing, it proides an
extremely flexible multi%resolution image and
can decompose an original image into different
subband images including lo!% and high%
frequencies. Therefore people can choose the
specific resolution data or subband images upon
their o!n demands
,hen the input image is decomposed
into four%subband images, it has to deal !ith ro!
and column directions separately. ;irst, the high%
pass filter G and the lo!%pass filter H are
exploited for each ro! data, and then are do!n%
sampled by ) to get high% and lo!%frequency
components of the ro!. Aext, the high and the
lo!%pass filters are applied again for each high%
and lo!%frequency components of the column,
and then are do!n%sampled by ). 7y !ay of the
aboe processing, the four subband images are
generated< '', '1, 1', and 11. >ach subband
image has its o!n feature, such as the lo!%
frequency information is presered in the 11%
band and the high frequency information is
almost presered in the ''%, '1%, and 1'%
bands. The 11%subband image can be further
decomposed in the same !ay for the second leel
subband image. 7y using )%B B,T, an image
can be decomposed into any leel subband
images,
The discrete !aelet transform (B,T) is
a linear transformation that operates on a data
ector and it is a tool that separates data into
arious frequency component and then it
analyses each component !ith resolution
matched to its scale. B,T is computed !ith a
cascade of filtering is follo!ed by a factor )
subsampling (;ig.8).
$i".- . DWT Tree.
' and 1 denotes high and lo!%pass filters
respectiely, C ) denotes subsampling. Dutputs
of this filters are gien by equations
(/)
())
>lements aj are used for next step (scale) of the
transform and elements dj, called !aelet
coefficients, determine output of the transform.
l[n] and h[n] are coefficients of lo! and high%
pas filters respectiely Dne can assume that on
scale j+1 there is only half from number of a and
d elements on scale j. This causes that B,T can
be done until only t!o aj elements remain in the
analy6ed signal These elements are called scaling
function coefficients.
E. .i,to"ra' E/ua!i0ation
'istogram equali6ation is done to
improe the isual quality of the obtained image
by improing the contrast of the image. The goal
of histogram equali6ation is to approximate the
grayscale alue distribution of an image to
uniform distribution. It is an image enhancement
technique, !here histogram of the resultant
image is as flat as possible. It makes the gray
leel to be eenly distributed across the image.
;or gray scale distribution histogram equali6ation
is performed oer the lo! frequency input image.
The histogram of the input image is
sho!n in ;igure 5.
$i" 1. .i,to"ra' e/ua!i0ation i* in&ut i'a"e
$. $i!terin"
The method of road extraction in certain
locations poses challenge because the spectral
reflectance of some of the old buildings (or
buildings !ith a type of construction that renders
a dark road like effect) resembles the road
surface. Such buildings form the clutter and these
non road structures need to be remoed. Salient
road attribute is its linear structure !hich can be
used for extracting elongated road regions. $
linear operator (predefinedE user%defined length)
controls the filtering of the road segments not
belonging to the global road net!ork. 'o!eer,
!ith median filtering, the alue of an output pixel
is determined by the median of the neighborhood
pixels, rather than the mean.
Median $i!terin"
In order to smooth the image noise, a
median filter is applied considering the !indo!
8x8 for each pixel. 2edian filtering is similar to
using an aeraging filter, in that each output pixel
is set to an aerage of the pixel alues in the
neighborhood of the corresponding input pixel.
'o!eer, !ith median filtering, the alue of an
output pixel is determined by the median of the
neighborhood pixels, rather than the mean. The
median is much less sensitie than the mean to
extreme alues (called outliers). 2edian filtering
is therefore better able to remoe these outliers
!ithout reducing the sharpness of the image
regionsEsegments are generated. The median
filter proes to be effectie in eliminating small
ehicles on roadsides in the imagery. $t the
meantime, this method is simple, quick and
automatic, hence the adantage of applying to
high spatial resolution images of huge olumes.
G. Ed"e Detection
2ost edge detection methods !ork on
the assumption that the edge occurs !here there
is a discontinuity in the intensity function or a
ery steep intensity gradient in the image. 'ere
the sobel based edge is used. In this if one take
the deriatie of the intensity alue across the
image and find points !here the deriatie is
maximum, then the edge could be located. The
gradient is a ector, !hose components measure
ho! rapid pixel alue are changing !ith distance
in the x and y direction
In order to detect the presence of a gradient
discontinuity, one could calculate the change in
the gradient at (i, j) .This can be done by finding
the follo!ing magnitude measure
(8)
and the gradient direction q is gien by
(5)
.. Water,ed Se"'entation
Image segmentation based on !atershed
transformation can potentially proide more
accurate segmentation !ith lo! computational
cost. It got its name from the manner in !hich
the algorithm segments regions into catchment
basins. There are t!o basic approaches to
!atershed image segmentation.
/. The first one starts !ith finding a
do!nstream path from each pixel of the image to
a local minimum of the image surface altitude. $
catchment basin is then defined as the set of
pixels for !hich their respectie do!nstream
paths all end up in the same altitude minima.
). The second approach is dual of the
first one+ a local minimum is identified for each
region and then the topographic surface is
immersed in !ater+ !ater starts filling all the
catchment basin. If t!o catchment basins !ould
merge as a result of further immersion, a dam is
built to preent it.
Water,ed Se"'entation U,in" Te
Di,tance Tran,*or'
$fter the gray leel transformation,
contrast enhancement, image denoising, image
smoothing, sharpening and so on the !atershed
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
HISTOGRAM EQUALIZATION
0 50 100 150 200 250
algorithm first takes the gradient of the intensity
image. The distance transforms of a binary image
is the distance from eery pixel of the ob#ect
component !hich is black pixels to the nearest
!hite pixel. In binary images there are only t!o
gray leels * and / !here * stand for black and /
stands for. Dnly one catchment basin !ill appear
in the topographic of a binary image surface only
!hen t!o black blobs are connected together. In
this article, the distance transforms along !ith
sobel edge detector hae been used to preprocess
the image to make it suitable for !atershed
segmentation.
Bistance function
1et F be a set of . ;or eery point y of F,
define the distance of y to the complementary set


,d(y) G dist(y, F )
(-)
It can easily be sho!n that a section of d at leel
i is gien by <
(@)
here is a disk of radius i
In belo!, figure @(a) sho!s a binary image
matrix, and in figure @(b) sho!s the
corresponding distance transform and figure H(a)
and H(b) sho! the Dutput of gradient of the
image and output of Bistance transform.


$i". 2. 3a4 Binar# i'a"e 'atrix,

354 Corre,&ondin" di,tance tran,*or'.

$i".6 3a4 Out&ut o* te Gradient o* te I'a"e

Watershed - Distance Transform
$i".6 354 Out&ut o* Di,tance tran,*or'
In this approach, for lo! contrast stellar
images !e hae used !atershed !ith markers. In
the initial step, one stellar image is chosen, !here
contrast of that image is lo! and appropriate area
is cropped. The clean up and oerlay the
perimeter on the original image by using
imoerlay function, This function takes input
image and a binary mask and generates an output
image, !here masked pixels hae been replaced
by a specified color.
Mar7er Contro!!ed Water,ed
Se"'entation
The next step is to apply markers for
ob#ect and background. The extended maxima
operator is used to identify groups of pixels that
are significantly higher than their immediate
surroundings. $gain cleaning up and oerlying is
there and compute the complement of the image
so that the peaks become alleys and modifies
the image using imposemin function.
The !atershed transform is often applied
to this problem. The !atershed transform finds
Icatchment basinsI and I!atershed ridge linesI
in an image by treating it as a surface !here light
pixels are high and dark pixels are lo!.
2arker%controlled !atershed segmentation
follo!s this basic procedure<
/. &ompute a segmentation function.
This is an image !hose dark regions are
the ob#ects you are trying to segment.
). &ompute foreground markers. These
are connected blobs of pixels !ithin each
of the ob#ects.
8. &ompute background markers. These
are pixels that are not part of any ob#ect.
5. 2odify the segmentation function so
that it only has minima at the foreground
and background marker locations.
-. &ompute the !atershed transform of
the modified segmentation.
The multi%scale morphological color
gradient is then calculated using the formula
(H)
,here
G(f) G 2orphological color gradient,
f G Gien image
7i%/ G Structuring element of si6e ()iJ/)x()iJ/)
The multi%scale morphological color
gradient is dilated !ith a square structuring
element of si6e )x). The constant h is then added
to the dilated image. $ final gradient image,
;G(f) is obtained by reconstructing the multi%
scale gradient mage, 2G(f) !ith its dilated
image as a reference image. The output of
marker controller of the input image is sho!n in
;igure K. (a) and (b)
Watershed - Marker Controlled
$i" 8. a4 Out&ut o* Water,ed 'ar7er
;inally summing up of the !atershed
transform along !ith consequence examination is
for extracting the road.

$i".9. Extracted road *ro' in&ut i'a"e
III. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The experiments are carried out to
ealuate the performance of proposed method
!ith existing !atershed segmentation using
distance transform method and !ith the usually
used differential edge detection operators such as
Sobel edge detector !ith the combination of
morphological !atershed segmentation using
distance transform.
The proposed method has been tested on the
image !ith the si6e of L-/) x -/)M and !ith )-@
gray leels. The final segmentation results of
arious aerial images are sho!n in ;igure /*.





$i".%:. Ori"ina! i'a"e and Re,u!t o* te
;ro&o,ed A!"orit'.
I<. CONCLUSION AND $UTURE
WOR=
The proposed algorithm detects the
single, bifurcating and intersection road by
setting proper threshold. The median filter is
used to remoe the noises like shado!s and
ehicles in the road. The edges of the road is
extracted using sobel operator. &urrent
limitations is the algorithm fails on the road cast
by different resolution images. The results sho!
that the algorithm can extract roads in suburban
areas !ith good results.
The proposed algorithm detects only the roads
in urban area and since this is a semi automatic
approach, manual thresholding is to be done for
the extraction of road. Therefore, the future !ork
!ill focus on deeloping an $utomatic hybrid
algorithm road detection algorithm to detect the
road in both structured and unstructured areas
!hich can also used in safelanding of Nnmaned
$erial .ehicles (N$.) application.
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