Co-registration of Satellite Images Based on Invariant Local Features

Abstract

Detection and matching of features from satellite images taken from different sensors, viewpoints, or at different times are important tasks when manipulating and processing remote sensing data for many applications. This paper presents a scheme for satellite image co-registration using invariant local features. Different corner and scale based feature detectors have been tested during the keypoint extraction, descriptor construction and matching processes. The framework suggests a sub-sampling process which controls the number of extracted key points for a real time processing and for minimizing the hardware requirements. After getting the pairwise matches between the input images, a full registration process is followed by applying bundle adjustment and image warping then compositing the registered version. Harris and GFTT have recorded good results with ASTER images while both with SURF give the most stable performance on optical images in terms of better inliers ratios and running time compared to the other detectors. SIFT detector has recorded the best inliers ratios on TerraSAR-X data while it still has a weak performance with other optical images like Rapid-Eye and ASTER.