An improved SIFT algorithm in the application of close-range Stereo image matching

Abstract

As unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing is applied in small area aerial photogrammetry surveying, disaster monitoring and emergency command, 3D urban construction and other fields, the image processing of UAV has become a hot topic in current research. The precise matching of UAV image is a key problem, which affects the subsequent processing precision directly, such as 3D reconstruction and automatic aerial triangulation, etc. At present, SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform) algorithm proposed by DAVID G. LOWE as the main method is, is widely used in image matching, since its strong stability to image rotation, shift, scaling, and the change of illumination conditions. It has been successfully applied in target recognition, SFM (Structure from Motion), and many other fields. SIFT algorithm needs the colour images to be converted into grayscale images, detects extremum points under different scales and uses neighbourhood pixels to generate descriptor. As we all know that UAV images with rich colour information, the SIFT algorithm improved through combining with the image colour information in this paper, the experiments are conducted from matching efficiency and accuracy compared with the original SIFT algorithm. The results show that the method which proposed in this paper decreases on the efficiency, but is improved on the precision and provides a basis choice for matching method.