Automatic Registration between EO and IR Images of KOMPSAT-3A Using Block-based Image Matching

Abstract

This paper focuses on automatic image registration between EO (Electro-Optical) and IR (InfraRed) satellite images with different spectral properties using block-based approach and simple preprocessing technique to enhance the performance of feature matching. If unpreprocessed EO and IR images from Kompsat-3A satellite were applied to local feature matching algorithms (Scale Invariant Feature Transform, Speed-Up Robust Feature, etc.), image registration algorithm generally failed because of few detected feature points or mismatched pairs despite of many detected feature points. In this paper, we proposed a new image registration method which improved the performance of feature matching with block-based registration process on 9-divided image and pre-processing technique based on adaptive histogram equalization. The proposed method showed better performance than without our proposed technique on visual inspection and I-RMSE. This study can be used for automatic image registration between various images acquired from different sensors.