Automatic photo-to-terrain alignment for the annotation of mountain pictures | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore

Automatic photo-to-terrain alignment for the annotation of mountain pictures


Abstract:

We present a system for the annotation and augmentation of mountain photographs. The key issue resides in the registration of a given photograph with a 3D geo-referenced ...Show More

Abstract:

We present a system for the annotation and augmentation of mountain photographs. The key issue resides in the registration of a given photograph with a 3D geo-referenced terrain model. Typical outdoor images contain little structural information, particularly mountain scenes whose aspect changes drastically across seasons and varying weather conditions. Existing approaches usually fail on such difficult scenarios. To avoid the burden of manual registration, we propose a novel automatic technique. Given only a viewpoint and FOV estimates, the technique is able to automatically derive the pose of the camera relative to the geometric terrain model. We make use of silhouette edges, which are among most reliable features that can be detected in the targeted situations. Using an edge detection algorithm, our technique then searches for the best match with silhouette edges rendered using the synthetic model. We develop a robust matching metric allowing us to cope with the inevitable noise affecting detected edges (e.g. due to clouds, snow, rocks, forests, or any phenomenon not encoded in the digital model). Once registered against the model, photographs can easily be augmented with annotations (e.g. topographic data, peak names, paths), which would otherwise imply a tedious fusion process. We further illustrate various other applications, such as 3D model-assisted image enhancement, or, inversely, texturing of digital models.
Published in: CVPR 2011
Date of Conference: 20-25 June 2011
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 22 August 2011
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Conference Location: Colorado Springs, CO, USA

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