A video system capable of simulating Landsat TM 5, 4, 3 imagery

This article describes a multispectral digital video imaging system that 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 cameras are sensitive to visible/near-infrared wave-lengths and are equipped with visible red (0.625–0.635 μm) and NIR (0.845–0.857 μm) narrowband filters, respectively. The third camera is sensitive to visible/NIR/middle-infrared The third camera is sensitive to visible/NIR/middle-infrared wavelengths (MIR) (0.40–2.20 μm) and was equipped with an MIR (1.631–1.676 μm) narrowband filter. The computer is a Bi-Link Pentium 90 MHz system that has an RGB image grabbing board with 640 × 480 pixel resolution. The MIR, NIR, and red image signals from the cameras are subjected to RGB inputs of the computer digitizing board, thus giving a false color composite digital image similar in color rendition to TM 5, 4, 3 satellite imagery. The computer hard disk can store 1000 false color composite images. Image esults showed this system to have potential for a variety of remote sensing applications including detection of plant species and distinguishing among vegetation cover types.