  Currently, numerous remote sensing satellites provide a huge volume of
diverse earth observation data. As these data show different features regarding
resolution, accuracy, coverage, and spectral imaging ability, fusion techniques
are required to integrate the different properties of each sensor and produce
useful information. For example, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data can be
fused with optical imagery to produce 3D information using stereogrammetric
methods. The main focus of this study is to investigate the possibility of
applying a stereogrammetry pipeline to very-high-resolution (VHR) SAR-optical
image pairs. For this purpose, the applicability of semi-global matching is
investigated in this unconventional multi-sensor setting. To support the image
matching by reducing the search space and accelerating the identification of
correct, reliable matches, the possibility of establishing an epipolarity
constraint for VHR SAR-optical image pairs is investigated as well. In
addition, it is shown that the absolute geolocation accuracy of VHR optical
imagery with respect to VHR SAR imagery such as provided by TerraSAR-X can be
improved by a multi-sensor block adjustment formulation based on rational
polynomial coefficients. Finally, the feasibility of generating point clouds
with a median accuracy of about 2m is demonstrated and confirms the potential
of 3D reconstruction from SAR-optical image pairs over urban areas.
