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Concept
Ground truth
Summary
Ground truth is information that is known to be real or true, provided by direct observation and measurement (i.e. empirical evidence) as opposed to information provided by inference.
The Oxford English Dictionary (s.v. ground truth) records the use of the word Groundtruth in the sense of 'fundamental truth' from Henry Ellison's poem "The Siberian Exile's Tale", published in 1833.
"Ground truth" may be seen as a conceptual term relative to the knowledge of the truth concerning a specific question. It is the ideal expected result. This is used in statistical models to prove or disprove research hypotheses. The term "ground truthing" refers to the process of gathering the proper objective (provable) data for this test. Compare with gold standard.
For example, suppose we are testing a stereo vision system to see how well it can estimate 3D positions. The "ground truth" might be the positions given by a laser rangefinder which is known to be much more accurate than the camera system.
Bayesian spam filtering is a common example of supervised learning. In this system, the algorithm is manually taught the differences between spam and non-spam. This depends on the ground truth of the messages used to train the algorithm – inaccuracies in the ground truth will correlate to inaccuracies in the resulting spam/non-spam verdicts.
In remote sensing, "ground truth" refers to information collected at the imaged location. Ground truth allows image data to be related to real features and materials on the ground. The collection of ground truth data enables calibration of remote-sensing data, and aids in the interpretation and analysis of what is being sensed. Examples include cartography, meteorology, analysis of aerial photographs, and other techniques in which data are gathered at a distance.
More specifically, ground truth may refer to a process in which "pixels" on a satellite image are compared to what is imaged (at the time of capture) in order to verify the contents of the "pixels" in the image (noting that the concept of "pixel" is imaging-system-dependent).
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