Combining historical aerial photos from multiple dates

Factual Questions
1

Is there a tool for combining multiple historical aerial photos of the same spot, which were taken on different dates?

Since the photos were taken from multiple locations in the sky, perhaps part of the tool would work out the geometry for whatever features were common on more than one of the photos, so there would be both altitude information and correction for perspectives. I’d actually be pretty happy if I found an affordable tool for just this part of the problem.

I’m interested in a historic site of about 100 acres, complete with hills and cliffs, a creek with many big boulders, railroad tracks, bridges, and building ruins. I have multiple photos taken during the same flight in 1937, with different angles of view. Also I have single photos taken on dates in 1950, 1953, 1958, 1965, 1968, and more and more different dates as we get more recent.

I have traced details using a cad program, and have contemplated working out the geometry for a dataset of photo coordinates for features in common. I also have access to the site and have done some surveying there, so there are some features I can actually get accurate modern physical measurements from.

But it occurred to me others must have worked on this problem and maybe there’s a tool out there…

Thanks!!

2

In the aerial mapping business, we used different years for some court cases but always covered too much area to have all the physical properties to be the same.

If you have the exact same ground shapes each time, I have never heard of a tool or program to do this. I am sure the gov. can get it done but the cheap way, I would think is your CAD programs.

Or do you want to make as good an image using the various angles sort of like 3-D ??

Or are you trying to get additional data to enter into a CAD program?

I don’t understand what end result you are trying to get to. ???

Enlargement for a particular object can be made so as to over lap pretty good but that really only works at one distance so the other stuff won’t be at the same scale.

If there is a tool/program to do what I think you are asking for, I have never heard of it…

Can you provide more info on what you are trying for as an end result?

3

Have you looked at GRASS? It seems to do everything.

4

Wouldn’t you have to know the exact location and orientation each picture was taken from, relative to some defined location on the ground?

5

With careful analysis that info can be gleaned from each photo. Accuracy of the derived info varies, but can be surprisingly good.

Then armed with that info, each photo can be manipulated to a common scale, nadir & orientation. Once that’s done they combine easily.

6

Microsoft Research developed a very impressive tool called PhotoSynth for reconstructing 3D models from photos taken from unknown positions. I don’t know how robust it is against changes made over time.

7

Missed the edit window, sorry for the double post:

On further study, I need to also credit the University of Washington, according to Wikipedia.