A Radiometric Block Adjustment Method for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Images Considering the Image Vignetting

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with different sensors can provide data with high spatiotemporal resolution and have broad application prospects. During the flight of the UAV, changes in illumination, exposure time, etc., will cause different degrees of radiometric differences between images, resulting in a calibration relationship established on a single image that cannot be applied to other images; in addition, the vignetting effect also significantly changes the brightness distribution inside an image, thus posing challenges for radiometric calibration of UAV images. In this article, based on block adjustment (BA), we proposed a radiometric BA model under the consideration of vignetting and the light-dark differences between images. The proposed method requires only a small number of calibration blankets, thus reducing the complexity of the experiment. The results from two study areas showed that the proposed method could compensate for vignetting to a certain extent and the radiometric consistency of the two datasets was improved from 12.9%–21.8% to 4.7%–12.7%. Validated using ground samples, the mean root mean square error (RMSE) and mean relative percent error (MRPE) of all five bands were 0.054, 21.8%, and 0.037, 20.4% in the two study areas, respectively. The total uncertainty was less than 8.1%. When there were obvious light-dark differences between images, such as in the visible light bands, our method could significantly improve the accuracy of the radiometric calibration.