The Need for Accurate Geometric and Radiometric Corrections of Drone-Borne Hyperspectral Data for Mineral Exploration: MEPHySTo—A Toolbox for Pre-Processing Drone-Borne Hyperspectral Data

Drone-borne hyperspectral imaging is a new and promising technique for fast and precise acquisition, as well as delivery of high-resolution hyperspectral data to a large variety of end-users. Drones can overcome the scale gap between field and air-borne remote sensing, thus providing high-resolution and multi-temporal data. They are easy to use, flexible and deliver data within cm-scale resolution. So far, however, drone-borne imagery has prominently and successfully been almost solely used in precision agriculture and photogrammetry. Drone technology currently mainly relies on structure-from-motion photogrammetry, aerial photography and agricultural monitoring. Recently, a few hyperspectral sensors became available for drones, but complex geometric and radiometric effects complicate their use for geology-related studies. Using two examples, we first show that precise corrections are required for any geological mapping. We then present a processing toolbox for frame-based hyperspectral imaging systems adapted for the complex correction of drone-borne hyperspectral imagery. The toolbox performs sensor- and platform-specific geometric distortion corrections. Furthermore, a topographic correction step is implemented to correct for rough terrain surfaces. We recommend the c-factor-algorithm for geological applications. To our knowledge, we demonstrate for the first time the applicability of the corrected dataset for lithological mapping and mineral exploration.