Multispectral imaging

The research activity investigate the use of multispectral images particularly for two fields of application:

- precision farming: precision agriculture can be defined as the management strategy that uses ICT to bring data from multiple sources to take better decisions associated to agricultural production. We have considered flexible unmanned platforms (i.e Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - UAVs) to survey cultivated areas with multispectral cameras and derive Vegetation Indices (VI) for precision farming application. Specifically, the multispectral data were processed with a photogrammetric pipeline to create triband orthoimages of the surveyed sites. Those orthoimages were employed to extract some Vegetation Indices (VI) such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Green Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (GNDVI), and the Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), examining the vegetation vigor for each crop. Following these experiences, this activity has produced the innovative and unique MAIA multispectral camera for UAV platforms, in collaboration with SAL Engineering and Eoptis. MAIA detects VIS-NIR informations through 9 global shutter CMOS with high resolution and top sensitivity. It is designed to be employed on board of UAV platforms or aircrafts but it finds various applications on board terrestrial rovers too.

- cultural heritage: multispectral imaging allow to see hidden details and information which could be useful for documentation, restoration, advanced analyses, etc. We have investigated the potential of multispectral on canvas and wall frescoes.

Related publications:

- Candiago, S., Remondino, F., De Giglio, M., Dubbini, M., Gattelli, M., 2015: Evaluating multispectral images and vegetation indices for precision farming applications from UAV images. Remote Sensing, Vol. 7(4), pp. 4026-4047; doi:10.3390/rs70404026

- Remondino, F., Rizzi, A., Barazzetti, L., Scaioni, M., Fassi, F., Brumana, R., Pelagotti, A., 2011: Review of geometric and radiometric analyses of paintings. The Photogrammetric Record, Vol. 26(136), pp. 439-461

- Remondino, F., Pelagotti, A., 2010: Rilevare e rendere visibile l'invisibile - Documentazione 3D e multi-spettrale per la fruizione di capolavori artistici. Archeomatica, Vol.1(3), pp. 6-11

- Remondino, F., Pelagotti, A., Del Mastio, A., Uccheddu, F., 2009: Novel data registration techniques for art diagnostics and 3D heritage visualization. IX Conference on Optical 3D Measurement Techniques - Gruen/Kahmen (Eds), Vol.1, July 2009, Vienna, Austria

Other outcomes:

MAIA presentation: Last generation UAV-based multi-spectral camera for agricultural data acquisition - SIFET conference 2017 (Italian Society of Photogrammetry and Topography)

Funding: Private and internal