Multiscale registration of remote sensing image using robust SIFT features in Steerable-Domain

Abstract

This paper proposes a multiscale registration technique using robust Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) features in Steerable-Domain, which can deal with the large variations of scale, rotation and illumination between images. First, a new robust SIFT descriptor is presented, which is invariant under affine transformation. Then, an adaptive similarity measure is developed according to the robust SIFT descriptor and the adaptive normalized cross correlation of feature point’s neighborhood. Finally, the corresponding feature points can be determined by the adaptive similarity measure in Steerable-Domain of the two input images, and the final refined transformation parameters determined by using gradual optimization are adopted to achieve the registration results. Quantitative comparisons of our algorithm with the related methods show a significant improvement in the presence of large scale, rotation changes, and illumination contrast. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by the experimental results.