A VIDEO SYSTEM CAPABLE OF SIMULATING LANDSAT TM-5, TM-4, TM-3 IMAGERY

This article describes a multispectral digital video imaging system th at produces imagery similar to Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) Bands 5, 4 , 3. The system is comprised of two charge coupled device (CCD) analog video cameras, one tube analog; video camera, and a computer equipped with an image digitizing board. The two CCD came ms are sensitive to visible/near-infrared wavelengths and are equipped with visible red (0 .625-0.635 mu m) and NIR (0.845-0.857 mu m) narrowband filters, respec tively. The third camera is sensitive to visible/NIR/middle-infrared w avelengths (MIR) (0.40-2.20 mu m) and was equipped with an MIR (1.631- 1.676 mu m) narrowband filter. The computer is a Bi-Link Pentium 90 MH z system that has an RGB image grabbing board with 640x480 pixel resol ution. The MIR, NIR, and red image signals from the cameras are subjec ted to RGB inputs of the computer digitizing board, thus giving a fals e color composite digital image similar in color rendition to TM 5, 4, 3 satellite imagery. The computer hard disk can store 1000 false colo r composite images. Image results showed this system to have potential for a variety of remote sensing applications including detection of p lant species and distinguishing among vegetation cover types. Publishe d by Elsevier Science Inc.