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The objective of any radiometric correction of airborne and spaceborne imagery of optical sensors is the extraction of physical earth surface parameters such as spectral albedo, directional reflectance quantities, emissivity, and temperature. To achieve this goal the influence of the atmosphere, solar illumination, sensor viewing geometry, and terrain information have to be taken into account. Although a lot of information from airborne and satellite imagery can be extracted without radiometric correction, the physically based approach offers advantages, especially when dealing with multitemporal data and when a comparison of different sensors is required. In addition, the full potential of imaging spectrometers can only be exploited with this approach.

Although physical models can be quite successful to eliminate atmospheric and topographic effects they inherently rely on an accurate spectral and radiometric sensor …