OTB was initiated by the French space agency (CNES)[2] 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.[3]
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.[14] 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.[15]
Since late 2009,[16] some modules are developed as processing plugins[17] 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[18], 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.[19][20]
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 [21] with the first release in July 2006.[22] The development version is publicly accessible.[23]
According to statistics on Open Hub,[31] 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 ESASentinel-2 missions.[30]
^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.
^Orfeo Toolbox Software Guide, Updated for OTB 3.18, 2013