- Definiens eCognition software is a powerful enterprise scale, feature extraction software.
- Trimble recently announced that they intend to acquire the company.
- The move was not for LiDAR, but image exploitation.
I highlighted Definiens eCognition software in a couple of very early LiDAR News posts. They have a very unique enterprise scale technology that is context rather than pixel-based. They will tell you that they like to use all the available imagery and data, including LIDAR to support their automated feature extraction technology.
Last week it was announced that Trimble had acquired the remote sensing technology portion of Definiens, allowing the latter to concentrate on the medical imaging field. Some speculated that this deal was a move driven by interest in expanding Trimble’s LiDAR offerings.
Trimble was quick to announce that this was not the case. They are more interested in exploiting imagery than LiDAR data. It seems to me it is the combination that has the most potential.
I think you are spot on with your assessment that data fusion is what holds the most potential.
I am amazed at how the most popular remote sensing software packages have nearly nothing to offer in terms of LiDAR capabilities. Smaller companies such as Definiens (eCognition) and Applied Imagery (QT Modeler) are coming up with innovative, albeit different, ways to fuse these two datasets. Rather ironic that the more popular remote sensing software packages have hyperspectral capabilities but no LiDAR capabilities. I don’t know at what rate high-resolution LiDAR data is being acquired in relation to hyperspectral data, but I bet the ratio favors LiDAR considerably.
One source for Trimble’s statement regarding LiDAR:
http://apb.directionsmag.com/archives/8112-Update-Trimble-Acquires-Definiens-Biz-Unit,-eCognition.html