Reconstruction of 3D Building Model from Satellite Imagery Based on the Grouping of 3D Line Segments Using Centroid Neural Network

This paper highlights the reconstruction of the rectilinear type of 3D rooftop model from satellite image data using centroid neural network. The main idea of the proposed 3D reconstruction method is based on the grouping of 3D line segments. 3D lines are extracted by 2D lines and DEM (Digital Elevation Map) data evaluated from a pair of stereo images. Our grouping process consists of two steps. We carry out the first grouping process to group fragmented or duplicated 3D lines into the principal 3D lines, which can be used to construct the rooftop model, and construct the groups of lines that are parallel each other in the second step. From the grouping result, 3D rooftop models are reconstructed by the final clustering process. High-resolution IKONOS images are utilized for the experiments. The experimental results indicate that the reconstructed building models almost reflect the actual position and shape of buildings in a precise manner, and that the proposed approach can be efficiently applied to building reconstruction problem from high-resolution satellite images of an urban area.