Relating Strategic and Tactical Intelligence Image Quality Metrics

The quality of imagery used for intelligence purposes—be it of topography, hardscape, or individuals—affects intelligence analysts’ ability to detect and identify an object. The higher the image quality, the more accurate the results. But image quality is a product of many complicated factors, and generalizations are made to produce useable metrics. The tactical and strategic components of the U.S. intelligence community have adopted different methods for defining image quality that are based on different philosophies and rely on mathematically incompatible frameworks.