Phase One innovates four-band aerial imaging

Phase One Industrial has introduced its Phase One 4-Band Solution, which incorporates an innovative batch-processing tool that automates and simplifies the four-band aerial image generation process.

Adding a fourth band of near infrared (NIR) image data to three-band color (RGB) image data yields multispectral information useful in vegetation studies — in applications ranging from crop metrics for optimization, to vegetation health, environmental contamination and city observations for green site monitoring.

Synchronized Phase One metric aerial cameras.

The solution is composed of two synchronized Phase One metric aerial cameras mounted side by side on a specially designed base plate, a Phase One iX Controller and Phase One iX Capture software.

Images are captured in NIR and RGB bands simultaneously, and processed automatically to generate distortion-free images and perform fine co-registration of the pixels from NIR to the RGB images — including processing different image sizes — with seven different output options, including multispectral CIR images.

Complementing the solution’s software functionality, the use of two separate cameras to support higher system sensitivity permits operators to separately control capture settings so that they can operate under a wider range of lighting conditions.

“We very easily installed the cameras into the gyro mount, and all power and communications were automatically configured with the iX-Controller,” said Peter Bochmann, operator of Aerial SurveyS GmbH. “The output four-band images were incredible, showing an area of forest vegetation straight-away that needed attention; we would not have seen this detail with RGB images alone. The flexibility of the solution is also great, since you can combine any two Phase One metric medium-format cameras and accomplish multiple jobs without changing the setup.”

The Phase One 4-Band Solution offers a variety of benefits:

• 100MP sensors for RGB and NIR images, no NIR up scaling is needed;
• CMOS sensors for maximum sensitivity;
• Post processing is automatic, using the solutions’ iX Controller along with iX Capture;
• Automatic individual aperture control and auto exposure mode is available for both cameras;
• Direct connection to GNSS/IMU systems; coordinates are stored inside the EXIF data of each image to speed later post-processing;
• Also available with 80MP RGB and 60MP Achromatic Sensors.