Image Mosaicking Using Feature Points Based on Color-invariant
Oh‐Seol Kwon, Dong-Chang Lee, Cheol‐Hee Lee, Yeong‐Ho Ha · Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea · 2009
In the field of computer vision, image mosaicking is a common method for effectively increasing restricted the field of view of a camera by combining a set of separate images into a single seamless image. Image mosaicking based on feature points has recently been a focus of research because of simple estimation for geometric transformation regardless distortions and differences of intensity generating by motion of a camera in consecutive images. Yet, since most feature-point matching algorithms extract feature points using gray values, identifying corresponding points becomes difficult in the case of changing illumination and images with a similar intensity. Accordingly, to solve these problems, this paper proposes a method of image mosaicking based on feature points using color information of images. Essentially, the digital values acquired from a digital color camera are converted to values of a virtual camera with distinct narrow bands. Values based on the surface reflectance and invariant to the chromaticity of various illuminations are then derived from the virtual camera values and defined as color-invariant values invariant to changing illuminations. The validity of these color-invariant values is verified in a test using a Macbeth Color-Checker under simulated illuminations. The test also compares the proposed method using the color-invariant values with the conventional SIFT algorithm. The accuracy of the matching between the feature points extracted using the proposed method is increased, while image mosaicking using color information is also achieved.