Separation of Water and Land in Thermal Infrared Imagery by Adding Near Infrared Information for Most Significant Bit

Abstract

A new technique has been studied to make clearer water-land boundary on the thermal imagery. In this technique, near infrared information is converted to one bit flag which separates water and land parts, and it is combined with seven bits thermal infrared information to make eight bits composite data.
The technique was applied to some Landsat TM image data. The result shows that the reasonable separation is realized between water and land, and that the thermal information in each of the parts can be enhanced in level 0-127 for water and 128-255 for land, respectively.
All of image processing processes was programed by FORTRAN 77 on the basis of a personal computer.