Two-Edge-Corner Image Features for Registration of Geospatial Images with Large View Variations

This paper presents a robust image feature that can be used to automatically establish match correspondences between aerial images of suburban areas with large view variations. Unlike most commonly used invariant image features, this feature is view variant. The geometrical structure of the feature allows predicting its visual appearance according to the observer’s view. This feature is named 2EC (2 Edges and a Corner) as it utilizes two line segments or edges and their intersection or corner. These lines are constrained to correspond to the boundaries of rooftops. The description of each feature includes the two edges’ length, their intersection, orientation, and the image patch surrounded by a parallelogram that is constructed with the two edges. Potential match candidates are obtained by comparing features, while accounting for the geometrical changes that are expected due to large view variation. Once the putative matches are obtained, the outliers are filtered out using a projective matrix optimization method. Based on the results of the optimization process, a second round of matching is conducted within a more confined search space that leads to a more accurate match establishment. We demonstrate how establishing match correspondences using these features lead to computing more accurate camera parameters and fundamental matrix and therefore more accurate image registration and 3D reconstruction.

Hierarchical Image Segmentation Using a Combined Geometrical and Feature Based Approach

This paper presents a fully automatic segmentation algorithm based on geometrical and local attributes of color images. This method incorporates a hierarchical assessment scheme into any general segmentation algorithm for which the segmentation sensitivity can be changed through parameters. The parameters are varied to create different segmentation levels in the hierarchy. The algorithm examines the consistency of segments based on local features and their relationships with each other, and selects segments at different levels to generate a final segmentation. This adaptive parameter variation scheme provides an automatic way to set segmentation sensitivity parameters locally according to each region's characteristics instead of the entire image. The algorithm does not require any training dataset. The geometrical attributes can be defined by a shape prior for specific applications, i.e. targeting objects of interest, or by one or more general constraint(s) such as boundaries between regions for non-specific applications. Using mean shift as the general segmentation algorithm, we show that our hierarchical approach generates segments that satisfy geometrical properties while conforming with local properties. In the case of using a shape prior, the algorithm can cope with partial occlusions. Evaluation is carried out on the Berkeley Segmentation Dataset and Benchmark (BSDS300) (general natural images) and on geo-spatial images (with specific shapes of interest). The F-measure for our proposed algorithm, i.e. the harmonic mean between precision and recall rates, is 64.2% on BSDS300, outperforming the same segmentation algorithm in its standard non-hierarchical variant.