Evaluation of 0.4 to 2.2 μm atmospheric correction techniques using the spectral similarity scale

The purpose of this research study is to evaluate the effectiveness of atmospheric correction and radiometric calibration techniques by measuring the differences of corrected data and ground truth spectra. Several atmospheric correction methods have been performed utilizing the ATREM and ACORN software packages. A variety of different settings (14 for ATREM and 5 for ACORN) have been tested and evaluated. The Spectral Similarity Scale (SSS) developed by BAE SYSTEMS is a measure of spectral similarity based on spectral magnitude and shape. The SSS-based spectral comparison process indicates that the default settings for iron rich soils are the best ATREM inputs for the Shelton, NEAVIRIS scene. The SSS comparison of the ACORN results with the spectral ground truth revealed that ACORN with the artifact type 1 was the best correction setting available for both ATREM and ACORN. For atmospheric water we find that ACORN is superior to ATREM. ATREM does correct for gain offsets that ACORN does not correct for with default settings. When used incorrectly, it is possible to severely reduce the spectral accuracy with either software package.