Time-SIFT : a frugal method for leveraging multi-temporal photogrammetric data without ancillary data
Authors: Feurer Denis , Bemis Sean , Coulouma Guillaume , Mabrouk Hatem , Massuel Sylvain , Barbosa Romina Vanessa , Thomas Yoann , Ammann Jérôme , Vinatier Fabrice 
Published: March 2020

&lt;p&gt;&lt;span&gt;L&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;atest advances in &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;lightweight aerial platforms, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;miniaturized RTK DGPS positioning and IMUs make &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;now &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;it possible &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;to build &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;multitemporal photogrammetric datasets with centrimetric accuracies&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;Together with the increase of very high-resolution topographic data availability, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;algorithms that came from the computer vision community also provoked a &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;marked resurgence of interest on archival photogrammetric data. Recently, Feurer and Vinatier (2018) proposed a method that rely on the invariance properties of the feature detection algorithms such as SIFT to estimate &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;orientations in a&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;single &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;multi-temporal block. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;This method allows for an inherent &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;co-registrat&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;ion of &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;processed &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;multi-temporal photogrammetric dataset&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;s&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span&gt;and hence detection and mapping of 3-D change from past imagery&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;. This work demonstrated that &amp;#8211; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;in &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;the case of archival aerial imagery &amp;#8211; the Time-SIFT method &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;enables&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;processing &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;of multi-temporal photogrammetric imagery without ancillary data.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span&gt;However, the potential of the Time-SIFT method had to be checked for in various contexts and spatio-temporal scales. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;More, the Time-SIFT method may allow to cope with the lack of precise positioning, in the case of image acquisitions made with frugal acquisition systems &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;for instance&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;Hence this study propose&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;s&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; to apply the &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;Time-&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;S&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;IFT method on &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;five &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;contrasting&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; test cases. The&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;ir&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; time and space scale&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;s&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; vary from a domain of several square-centimeter&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;s&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt; to domains of several tens of kilometers, with time spans varying from the minutes to the decades. The test cases rely within different disciplines of geoscience&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;s&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;, from soil science to vulcanology. Our works showed that the Time-SIFT methods succeeds through this whole range of spatio-temporal scales, and show even some unexpected robustness in context of strong changes due to vegetation and/or presence of water in coastal areas. These results demonstrate that the Time-SIFT method has a potential to tackle a wide variety of multi-temporal photogrammetric datasets, in particular in contexts where additional and calibration data are scarce.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;