PROCESSING OF SCANNED IMAGERY FOR CARTOGRAPHIC FEATURE EXTRACTION.

Digital cartographic data are usually captured by manually digitizing a map or an interpreted photograph or by automatically scanning a map. Both techniques first require manual photointerpretation to describe features of interest. A new approach, bypassing the laborious photointerpretation phase, is being explored using direct digital image analysis. Aerial photographs are scanned and color separated to create raster data. These are then enhanced and classified using several techniques to identify roads and buildings. Finally, the raster representation of these features is refined and vectorized. 11 refs.