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Robust feature matching via Gaussian field criterion for remote sensing image registration

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Abstract

Feature matching, which refers to establishing reliable feature correspondences between two images of the same scene, is a critical prerequisite in a wide range of remote sensing tasks including environment monitoring, multispectral image fusion, image mosaic, change detection, map updating. In this paper, we propose a method for robust feature matching and apply it to the problem of remote sensing image registration. We start by creating a set of putative feature matches which can contain a number of unknown false matches, and then focus on mismatch removal. This is formulated as a robust regression problem, and we customize a robust estimator, namely the Gaussian field criterion, to solve it. The robust criterion can handle both linear and nonlinear image transformations. In the linear case, we use a general homography to model the transformation, while in the nonlinear case, the non-rigid functions located in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space are considered, and a regularization term is added to the objective function to ensure its well-posedness. Moreover, we apply a sparse approximation to the non-rigid transformation and reduce the computational complexity from cubic to linear. Extensive experiments on various natural and remote sensing images show the effectiveness of our approach, which is able to yield superior results compared to other state-of-the-art methods.

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Notes

  1. Note that the Gaussian criteria are not fully robust to noise and outliers. It is essentially a low-pass filter that filters out high-frequency components (usually noise) based on the penalty factor. But it is ineffective in cases of salt and pepper noise characterized outliers.

  2. In this paper, we consider the optimal values as: \(\beta = 0.01\), \(\lambda = 0.1\), and \(M = 30\).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 61773295 and 61503288.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Engineering Research Center for E-Learning, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Qing Ma & Xu Du

  2. Electronic Information School, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Jiahao Wang, Yong Ma & Jiayi Ma

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  1. Qing Ma
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  2. Xu Du
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Correspondence to Jiayi Ma.

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Ma, Q., Du, X., Wang, J. et al. Robust feature matching via Gaussian field criterion for remote sensing image registration. J Real-Time Image Proc 15, 523–536 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11554-018-0760-5

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