SPRING Image Processing and GIS Software

Sources of Information

What is it?

SPRING is a free software package that integrates image processing and GIS into a single package. The software was developed by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in Brazil. INPE is the Brazilian equivalent of NASA. INPE has been actively involved in the use of satellite remote sensing for many decades. SPRING is quite powerful but the documentation is rather limited and it has just recently been translated to English from Portuguese. For this reason, the learning curve for the software can be rather steep.

The most intriguing feature of SPRING is its ability to perform image segmentation. This involves the identification of polygons (regions or image segments) in the image that are made up of pixels that have similar spectral properties. Initially, each pixel in the image is labeled as a distinct region. Each region then grows bidirectionally to include pixels with similar spectral properties. Image classification is then conducted on these regions, rather than on individual pixels. Regions are classified on the basis of the mean spectral properties, the covariance matrix and some spatial properties of the region (e.g. area).

The image segmentation features of SPRING are similar to those provided by a company called Definiens in their Definiens Professional/Ecognition software (The software was called Ecognition for a number of years but the company has recently started referring to Ecognition as “Definiens Professional.”). Definiens Professional/Ecognition is a commercial software package, produced in the U.S., and it is very expensive. Several recent papers have compared the capabilities of SPRING and Ecognition and have concluded that the output of both packages is quite similar. Ecognition is generally viewed as being much more user friendly and the high purchase price buys good user support. At present, the documentation for SPRING is minimal but it offers several different options for performing the classification of the segmented image while Ecognition currently only offers a single option.

Where to obtain SPRING:

http://www.dpi.inpe.br/spring/english/index.html: This site enables you to download the software and a tutorial that provides a good introduction to the software.

SPRING Programming Manual: Highly technical and not particularly useful. This really seems to be targeted towards programmers.

D. Wallin

12/12/2006