Ball Aerospace Expands Opticks Open Source Software

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., a supplier of metal and plastic packaging for beverage, food and household products customers, and of aerospace and other technologies and services, primarily for the U.S. government, has expanded its Opticks open-source software offerings to include new extensions that perform hyperspectral, multispectral and image spectroscopy analysis.

Opticks was launched in 2007 by the company as its first open source software project designed to enable detailed analysis of remote sensing data and complement strategy promoted by the Department of Defense's Open Technology Development Roadmap. Opticks is used by scientists and analysts within the DoD community to analyze remote sensing data and produce actionable intelligence.

Officials with Ball Aerospace said that Opticks expansion includes a new Spectral Processing Extension.  

According to company officials, the extension includes tools to convert imagery from radiance to reflectance as well as tools to load and display signatures, specifically wavelength versus reflectance. The extension, company officials said, also includes signature matching algorithms to help locate specified materials within an image.  

Company officials said that Ball is also expanding Opticks to include new extensions focused on scripting, specifically for the Python and Interactive Data Language (IDL) languages preferred by researchers and scientists.  

The new scripting extensions allow an analyst or remote sensing researcher to directly prototype new algorithms and techniques for use with the Opticks application.  

According to company officials, Opticks can be used to load and visualize imagery and Python or IDL scripts can be used to manipulate the imagery.  

In addition, Python- or IDL-based algorithms can be packaged into a new Opticks extension, creating easy distribution to others in the scientific and remote sensing community.

Opticks supports Imagery, Motion Imagery, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), and multi-spectral and hyper-spectral remote sensing data. Ball Aerospace officials expect Opticks to increase the demand for remote sensing data and broaden the features available in existing remote sensing software.