Variational calculus approach to multiresolution image mosaic

Abstract

Image mosaic combines two or more images. It has found many applications in computer vision, image processing, and computer graphics. A common goal of the problem is to join two or more images such that there is an invisible boundary around the seam line and the mosaic image is as little distorted from the original images as possible. We propose a new image mosaic method by wavelet multiresolution analysis and variational calculus. We first project the images into wavelet spaces. The projected images at each wavelet space are then blended. Variational calculus techniques are applied to balance the quality between the smoothness around the seam line and the fidelity of the combined image relative to the original images in image blending. A mosaic image is finally obtained by summing the blended images at the wavelet spaces. Experimental results based on our method are demonstrated.