To Bundle Adjust or Not: A Comparison of Relative Geolocation Correction Strategies for Satellite Multi-View Stereo

Abstract

The generation of up-to-date accurate 3D models from multi-view satellite images has recently become a hot research topic. A well-known challenge of this problem is to put all cameras into a common frame of reference, since depending on the satellite geopositioning equipment the camera parameters may contain errors of up to tens of meters on the ground. In this context, bundle adjustment based techniques, relying on the identification of a set of tie-points and the correction of the camera models to make them coincident, have become a generally accepted practice. However, new approaches capable of producing state-of-the-art results without the use of prior bundle adjustment have also been proposed. This work aims to compare both strategies and assess the practical impact of using bundle adjustment for 3D reconstruction from multi-view satellite images.