On some geometric and structural constraints in stereo line segment matching

Abstract

In this paper, selecting line segments as matching features in stereo vision, the orientation difference (O.D.) of the line segments is more deeply evaluated than the previous studies and two new constraints i.e. ordering and collinearity are proposed. The O.D. was supposed to be used for an indoor application, reducing candidates without elimination of the actual matches, especially if the line is horizontal or vertical with respect to the floor. The findings of this paper are as follows: 1) Applying a threshold on O.D. would result in a missing probability for the actual matches and this probability can be calculated for any given threshold, 2) The upper limit of O.D. for horizontal and vertical lines is a function of geometric parameters of the system, 3) An optimal tilt angle, whose results is the minimum upper limit for O.D., can be computed, 4) for disambiguation process, ordering and collinearity constraints are proposed. These are applied in a matching algorithm and their effectiveness is investigated on real stereo images. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.