In computer science, Orfeo Toolbox (OTB) is a software library for processing images from Earth observation satellites.

OTB was initiated by the French space agency (CNES) in 2006. The software is released under a free licence; a number of contributors outside CNES are taking part in development and integrating into other projects.E. Christophe and J. Inglada "Open Source Remote Sensing: Increasing the Usability of Cutting-Edge Algorithms" in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Newsletter, issue 150, March 2009, pp. 9-15.

The library was originally targeted at high resolution images acquired by the Orfeo constellation: Pléiades and Cosmo-Skymed, but it also handles other sensors.

Purpose OTB provides:Orfeo Toolbox Software Guide, Updated for OTB 3.18, 2013

Image access: read/write access for most remote sensing image formats (using GDAL), meta-data access, visualization Data access: vector data access (shapefile, kml), DEM model, lidar data Filtering: blurring, denoising, enhancement for optical or radar data Feature extraction: texture computations including Haralick, SFS, Pantex, Edge density, points of interest, alignments, lines, SIFT, SURF Image segmentation: region growing, watershed, level sets Classification: K-means, SVM, Markov random fields and access to all OpenCV machine learning algorithms Change detection Stereo reconstruction from images Orthorectification and map projections (using ossim) Radiometric indices (vegetation, water, soil) Object-based segmentation and filtering PCA computation Visualization: a flexible visualization system, customizable via plugins;

Languages and interaction with other software OTB is a C++ library, based on Insight toolkit (ITK). Bindings are developed for Python.OTB Mad Lab (OTB in python example): A method to use OTB components within IDL/ENVI has been published. One of the OTB user defined a procedure to use the library capabilities from MATLAB.Using OTB from Matlab: http://groups.google.com/group/otb-users/browse_thread/thread/8ea7ba2e4034a0f1#

Since late 2009,OTB Qgis plugins: some modules are developed as processing plugins for QGIS. Modules for classification, segmentation, hill shading have provided. This effort relies only on volunteers.

OTB algorithms were available in QGIS through the processing framework Sextante. Since March 2024, a QGIS plugin is now available in QGIS catalog to work with an installed OTB software.

Applications

Additionally to the library, several applications with GUI are distributed. These application enable interactive segmentation, orthorectification, classification, image registration, etc...

Monteverdi (version 1 and 2)

The OTB-Applications package makes available a set of simple software tools . It supports raster and vector data and integrates most of the already existing OTB applications. The architecture takes advantage of the streaming and multi-threading capabilities of the OTB pipeline. It also uses features such as processing on demand and automagic file format I/O. The application is called Monteverdi.Mark Young, Danielle Argiro and Steven Kubica, Cantata: Visual Programming Environment for the Khoros System, Computer Graphics, 1995, volume 29, pp 22-24

In 2013, Monteverdi software was revamped into a new software called Monteverdi2.

Since OTB version 9.0 Monterverdi is no longer packaged and supported. However a QGIS plugin allow to use otb application with GUI.

License

OTB was initially distributed under the French Open Source license CeCILL (similar and compatible with the GNU GPL) and is now available under the Apache 2.0 license.

History The development started in January 2006 with the first release in July 2006. The development version is publicly accessible.

Release history Version Codename Release date Comments 1.0.0 June 30, 2006 1.2.0 February, 2007 1.4.0 June, 2007 1.6.0 October, 2007 2.0.0 December, 2007 2.2.0 June, 2008 2.4.0 July, 2008 2.6.0 Halloween November, 2008 2.8.0 恭喜发财 (Gong Xi Fa Cai) January, 2009 3.0.0 Manhã de Carnaval May, 2009 3.2.0 62°38'35" S 60°14'31" W January, 2010 3.4.0 Perl A Rebours July, 2010 3.6.0 California Dreamin' October 7, 2010 3.8.0 Pack Ice December 17, 2010 3.10.0 Feliç anniversari June 30, 2011 3.12.0 Πλειάδες January 31, 2012 3.16.0 “v(n+1) = sqrt((v(n)-3)*100)” February 4, 2013 3.18.0 “Seven years of Coding” July 3, 20133.18.1July 23, 20133.20.0November, 20134.0.0March, 20144.2.0September 3, 20144.2.1September 19, 20144.4.0February, 20155.0.0May, 20155.2.0December, 20155.2.1January, 20165.4.0May, 20165.6.0July, 20165.6.1August, 20165.8.0November, 20165.10.0February, 20175.10.1March, 20176.0.0May, 20176.2.0October, 20176.4.0January, 20186.6.0June, 20186.6.1December, 20186.6.2April, 20197.0.0October, 2019Start using Semantic Versioning7.1.0March, 20207.2.0October, 20207.3.0May, 20217.4.0September, 20217.4.1April, 20228.0.0March, 20228.0.1April, 20218.1.0September, 20228.1.1January, 20238.1.2July, 20239.0.0February, 2024Dropping Monteverdi, Mapla and Mac support. Big changes in compilation chain9.1.0September, 2024Spot5 support9.1.1911_license_change_emergencyMarch, 2025No more FFTW shipped by default with OTB (it leads to GPLv2 contamination)

Presentations OTB has been presented in major conferences across the five continents IGARSS 2008 in Boston ISPRS 2008 in Beijing International Summer School on VHR Remote Sensing 2008 in Grenoble ESA-EUSC 2008 in Frascati EUSC Software days 2009 in Madrid AUF 2009 in Alger IGARSS 2009 in Cape Town for the invited session Open Source Initiatives for Remote Sensing - Orfeo Toolbox FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney Capacity building 2009 in Antananarivo Insight Toolkit 2010 Workshop in Washington as a keynote session IGARSS 2010 in Honolulu for a tutorial FOSS4G 2010 in Barcelona OGRS 2012 in Yverdon Les Bains

According to statistics on Open Hub, there is a total of 95 contributors and almost 402,000 lines of code (this include many libraries upon which OTB is built).

OTB in also use for the development of the operational ground segment for the VENμS (Vegetation and Environment monitoring on a New Micro Satellite) and the ESA Sentinel-2 missions.

References

External links