Leica Geosystems has signed an agreement designating ESRI Japan Corporation as Japan’s exclusive distributor of the ERDAS IMAGINE geographic imaging product line from Leica Geosystems. The ESRI Japan joint venture formed by PASCO Corporation and ESRI will function in Japan as an international distributor and consultant of ESRI and ERDAS IMAGINE software. Both ESRI and PASCO are strategic partners of Leica Geosystems. PASCO has also been distributor of ERDAS IMAGINE in Japan from 1987 until the establishment of ESRI Japan, and recently passed a benchmark of selling 1,000 licenses of the imaging system.

The ERDAS IMAGINE total digital solution for transforming raw imagery into 2D and 3D GIS data was incorporated into the GIS & Mapping Division of Leica Geosystems when Leica Geosystems acquired ERDAS in 2001. The comprehensive product line offers customers extensive tools for photogrammetry, orthorectification, DTM and 3D feature extraction (IMAGINE OrthoBASE, IMAGINE OrthoBASE Pro and ERDAS Stereo Analyst for ArcGIS), and 3D scene visualization (IMAGINE VirtualGIS).