Overview

About eCognition Suite

Trimble® eCognition® Suite is an advanced analysis software available for geospatial applications. It is designed to improve, accelerate and automate the interpretation of a variety of geospatial data and enables users to design feature extraction or change detection solutions to transform geospatial data into geo-information.

eCognition imports a variety of geospatial data, fusing them together into a rich stack of geo-data for the analysis. The analysis logic is structured into series of steps to create a computer-based representation of an expert’s geospatial interpretation process a so called Rule Set. eCognition then combines the analysis logic with scalable computing power to identify changes over time or features on the earth’s surface across very large sets of data.

This eCognition Suite 10.1 is a major release and includes a range of new features and bug fixes. We recommend upgrading to this new version to benefit from the new features and improvements. For an overview of the highlights and a complete list of new features and bug fixes please refer to the following chapters.

 

Key Features

Building Analysis Solutions

The eCognition technology examines image pixels not in isolation, but in context. It builds up a picture iteratively, recognizing groups of pixels as objects. Just like the human mind, it uses color, shape, texture, shape and size of objects, as well as their context and relationships, to draw the same conclusions that an experienced analyst would draw.

To build an analysis solution, it is possible to flexibly combine the image interpretation steps like object creation (segmentation), object classification (knowledge based, fuzzy logic, machine learning), object detection (template matching) and object modification (fusing, smoothing, orthogonalization, simplification) into a Rule Set or even a new application (Rule Set with UI) to solve the analysis problem.

The result is a unique approach to translate mind models (why a human interpreter can see the objects, changes, or features in the geospatial data) into computer understandable code (Rule Set) or an individual/customized application.

 

 

 

 

 

Leveraging Data Synergies

eCognition can fuse a variety of geospatial data, such as spectral image data, 3D structure data from point clouds and spatial/thematic data from GIS vectors.

The proximity of eCognition to GIS, its ability to link and fuse the available data in an analysis - combined with the straightforward export of results to GIS layers - help eCognition users to achieve outstanding results.

 

 

 

Efficient Workflows

The eCognition Suite offers three different components which can be used stand-alone or in combination to solve even the most challenging fully automated and semi-automated production tasks:

 

• eCognition Developer is the development environment for object-based image analysis. It is used in geospatial industry to develop Rule Sets or applications for eCognition Architect for the automatic analysis of geospatial data.
• eCognition Architect enables non-technical professionals such as vegetation mapping experts, urban planners or foresters to leverage eCognition technology. Users can easily configure, calibrate and execute analysis applications (Rule Set in combination with a UI) created in eCognition Developer.
• eCognition Server software provides a powerful processing environment for batch and parallel execution of analysis jobs, based on Rule Sets or applications.

 

eCognition Suite 10.1 Highlights

Expanded Deep Learning Support

It is now possible to import external, pre-trained TensorFlow models into eCognition. Deep Learning users can save time in the sample generation, model creation & training phases of the workflow. This also makes Deep Learning more accessible to non-experts - bridging the gap between different domains.

Additional Surface Calculation Tools

We have added new tools to improve surface calculations & analysis. It is now possible to generate hillshade layers based on DSM & DTM inputs.

Result of hillshade calculation for elevation image

In addition, a Ridge Filter algorithm has been added that improves the extraction of ridge-like features in images & elevation data.

Result of ridge filter calculation for elevation image

Improved Classification Tools

The use of majority vote functionality is now supported in two different formats:

A majority filter algorithm has been introduced as a layer operation to be applied on raster inputs.

Detail of majority filter

A majority vote feature increases the contextual relationship between image objects to make classification easier.

Cloud-Readiness Capabilities

We continue to improve our cloud readiness & have packaged our License Server as a docker container to simplify your migration to cloud environments. This makes life easier for IT managers as they can utilize one-line deployment.