Abstract:An investigation is carried out on the applicability of several main generalized sensor models for QuickBird high resolution satellite imagery.The timevariant parallel perspective model was proposed and proved to be the most suitable model to describe the imaging geometry of the QuickBird imagery. Stereo positioning experiments and accuracy analysis were then made by using the QuickBird stereo image pair in Shanghai district based on the proposed model. The results show that stereo positioning accuracy of the timevariant parallel perspective model is very close to that of the biascompensated rational function model,and the planimetric positioning accuracy reaches subpixel level.