Large Aerial Image Tie Point Matching in Real and Difficult Survey Areas via Deep Learning Method

Abstract

Image tie point matching is an essential task in real aerial photogrammetry, especially for model tie points. In current photogrammetry production, SIFT is still the main matching algorithm because of the high robustness for most aerial image tie points matching. However, when there is a certain number of weak texture images in a surveying area (mountain, grassland, woodland, etc.), these models often lack tie points, resulting in the failure of building an airline network. Some studies have shown that the image matching method based on deep learning is better than the SIFT method and other traditional methods to some extent (even for weak texture images). Unfortunately, these methods are often only used in small images, and they cannot be directly applied to large image tie point matching in real photogrammetry. Considering the actual photogrammetry needs and motivated by the Block-SIFT and SuperGlue, this paper proposes a SuperGlue-based LR-Superglue matching method for large aerial image tie points matching, which makes learned image matching possible in photogrammetry application and promotes the photogrammetry towards artificial intelligence. Experiments on real and difficult aerial surveying areas show that LR-Superglue obtains more model tie points in forward direction (on average, there are 60 more model points in each model) and more image tie points between airline(on average, there are 36 more model points in each adjacent images). Most importantly, the LR-Superglue method requires a certain number of points between each adjacent model, while the Block-SIFT method made a few models have no tie points. At the same time, the relative orientation accuracy of the image tie points matched by the proposed method is significantly better than block-SIFT, which reduced from 3.64 μm to 2.85 μm on average in each model (the camera pixel is 4.6 μm).