First Test of Agisoft Metashape Satellite Image Processing for DSM Generation: A Case Study in Trento with Pléiades Imagery

As to the problem of DSM generation using satellite imagery, the latest version (1.6) of Agisoft Metashape – previously known as Photoscan – is one of the latest solutions, which follows other open source and commercial software tools, able to complete the task of extracting a discrete representation of the Earth surface from satellite sensor products. In order to quantitatively assess the new functionality implemented by Agisoft Metashape 1.6, this works presents an accuracy evaluation of the DSMs generated through a dataset consisting of a triplet of Pleiades images acquired on August 28, 2012. These images cover the area of Trento and the Adige valley, characterized by a great variety in terms of geomorphology, land uses and land covers. In addition to the accuracy assessment, consisting of a statistical analysis of the height discrepancies between the generated DSMs and a LiDAR DSM used as reference, the effectiveness of the software matching strategy and its efficiency are highlighted.