User:Amicitia77/ATCOR

The ATCOR® software is a remote sensing software which corrects atmospheric effects, caused by aerosol scattering, atmospheric transmittance, and topographic influence, on images of the earth’s surface taken by satellite or airborne sensors.

Atmospheric correction and topographic correction are the elimination of atmospheric and illumination effects to retrieve physical parameters of the earth's surface, i.e., the retrieval the spectral reflectance, emissivity and temperature at the bottom of the atmosphere. The ATCOR® products solve this task using look up tables calculated with the MODTRAN® radiative transfer code. The ATCOR® models has been split into separate codes optimized for satellite sensors and airborne sensors:

The satellite ATCOR® (ATCOR-2) supports only small to moderate FOV sensors for flat terrain. It includes a large database of atmospheric_correction functions (look-up-tables computed with the Modtran® 5 radiative transfer code) covering a wide range of weather conditions, sun angles, and ground elevations. ATCOR-2 is limited to multispectral and thermal standard satellite systems.

The satellite ATCOR®, rugged terrain (ATCOR-3) supports small to moderate FOV sensors for both, flat and rugged terrain. It includes a large database of atmospheric correction functions (look-up-tables computed with the MODTRAN® 5 radiative transfer code) covering a wide range of weather conditions, sun angles, and ground elevations. In addition to multispectral instruments, ATCOR-3 includes support for imaging spectrometers in space.

The airborne ATCOR® (ATCOR-4) corrects small and wide FOV airborne optical and thermal scanner data. It interpolates the solution from an extensive Modtran®-derived atmospheric database for typical flight altitudes and solar geometries. It is specifically used for airborne hyperspectral imaging instruments.

The ATCOR method has originally (since 1998) been developed at DLR (Munich, Germany) by Dr. R. Richter. It is now further developed and maintained by ReSe Applications LLC (Wil, Switzerland). It’s core modules have been licensed to the PCI Geomatica Remote Sensing Processing software and ATCOR is an optional part of the ERDAS Imagine Software.

Field of application[edit]

Atmospheric correction, or atmospheric compensation alternatively, is the retrieval of physical surface characteristics such as reflectance, emittance, or temperature from remote sensing image data. Imaging spectroscopy, or chemical sensing alternatively, serves in the fields of environmental research, geological exploration (mineral spectroscopy), agricultural and forestry industries, airborne reconnaissance, as well as in mapping applications.

Category:Software Category:Science software Category:Remote sensing software