A Registration Scheme for Multispectral Systems Using Phase Correlation and Scale Invariant Feature Matching

Abstract

In the past few years, many multispectral systems which consist of several identical monochrome cameras equipped with different bandpass filters have been developed. However, due to the significant difference in the intensity between different band images, image registration becomes very difficult. Considering the common structural characteristic of the multispectral systems, this paper proposes an effective method for registering different band images. First we use the phase correlation method to calculate the parameters of a coarse-offset relationship between different band images. Then we use the scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) to detect the feature points. For every feature point in a reference image, we can use the coarse-offset parameters to predict the location of its matching point. We only need to compare the feature point in the reference image with the several near feature points from the predicted location instead of the feature points all over the input image. Our experiments show that this method does not only avoid false matches and increase correct matches, but also solve the matching problem between an infrared band image and a visible band image in cases lacking man-made objects.