The task of assembling individual frames from a video stream into a single giant sized image is known as image mosaicing. The present scenario deals with a real world situation where the video frames and the digital flight data are obtained from a sensor mounted on an aircraft. The paper describes different approaches of automatic image mosaicing suitable for the present application. The analytical method finds out matching points between the successive image pairs using some sort of similarity measures and use generalized transformation equation to calculate translation, rotation and scaling. The Fourier method uses Fourier transform to calculate the translation and rotation between successive image frames and assemble the images on a large geo-referenced canvas. In both the cases, perspective distortion in the image due to forward-looking sensor ia eliminated. The algorithms, implemented in a SGI workstation, are used to generate mosaics of terrain from the stream of video imagery obtained during actual flight trial of an aircraft and results presented.

Abstract

2002