Registration

Synonyms

Coregistration; Co-registration; Georegistration

Definition

Registration is the process of geometrically matching different spatial datasets of the same area so that identical features are perfectly superimposed. In GIS, this match is usually performed within common geographic coordinate system. Spatial datasets may be from different sensors (e. g. satellite, aerial) and sources (e. g. maps, images), and acquired at different times (e. g. multidate satellite imagery).

Main Text

Registration is usually performed using one dataset as a reference (or master) and the other datasets as targets (or slaves) to correct. Registration can also be independently performed on different datasets (e. g. independent registration of multidate images to a common projection). In this case, registration does not involve any reference‐target processing.

Basically, registration algorithms can be linear or non-linear. Linear transformations involve translation, rotation, or scaling of the target...