System and method of the present disclosure provide a linguistic approach to image processing. Prior art focused on extracting well-defined single objects occupying large portion of an image area. However, there was no focus on higher level semantics or distribution of object categories within the image. In contrast to imagery by handheld devices, remotely sensed data contains numerous objects because of relative large coverage and distribution over objects is critical to analyzing such large coverage. Accordingly, in the present disclosure, a generative statistical model is defined wherein an aerial image is modelled as a collection of the one or more themes and each of the one or more themes is modelled as a collection of object categories. The model automatically adapts to a scale of the aerial image and appropriately identifies the themes which may be used for applications including monitoring land use, infrastructure management and the like.
System and method for theme extraction