Registration of multitemporal aerial optical images using line features

Registration of multitemporal images is generally considered difficult because scene changes can occur between the times the images are obtained. Since the changes are mostly radiometric in nature, features are needed that are insensitive to radiometric differences between the images. Lines are geometric features that represent straight edges of rigid man-made structures. Because such structures rarely change over time, lines represent stable geometric features that can be used to register multitemporal remote sensing images. An algorithm to establish correspondence between lines in two images of a planar scene is introduced and formulas to relate the parameters of a homography transformation to the parameters of corresponding lines in images are derived. Results of the proposed image registration on various multitemporal images are presented and discussed.