DIGITAL ELEVATION MODEL INTERPOLATION BY FUSION OF MORPHOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION AND DISTANCE TRANSFORMATION

Abstract. Interpolation methods have significant impacts on the accuracy of the digital elevation model (DEM) from contours which are one of frequently employed data sources. In this paper, an interpolation method is presented to build DEM from contour lines by fusion/integration of morphological reconstruction and distance transformation with obstacles. Particularly, morphological reconstruction is used to get the elevation values of the higher contour lines and the lower contour lines of any a spatial point between two contour lines, and distance transformation with obstacles is used to get the geodesic distances of the spatial point to the higher contour lines and the lower contour lines respectively. At last, linear interpolation along water flow line is used to get the elevation values of the pixels to be interpolated. The experiment demonstrates that feasibility of our proposed method.