Automatic Remote-sensing Image Registration Using SURF

Abstract

Image registration is a key, essential element in analysis of Remote sensing images. Registration is critical both for initial processing and for end-user processing of those image products for data fusion, and change detection. This paper focused on the feature-based category of image registration algorithms. Many techniques for the detection and description of images' local characteristics have been proposed to register a set of images without user intervention. However, it is unclear which descriptors are more appropriate. The descriptors should be distinctive and at the same time robust to changes in viewing conditions as well as to errors of the sensor. In our evaluation, we have separated the detector from the descriptor as their performance depends on the interest point detector used. The descriptors are compared according to their recall and runtime efficiency and this deals with several geometric and photometric changes. We also propose an extension to the SURF descriptor and the results show the effectiveness of proposed improvements compared to base SURF method. Furthermore, we observe that the SURF descriptor outperforms the others' descriptors. Finally, based on the test results, we propose an approach to register automatically remotely sensed images.