Complex wavelet-based image mosaics using edge-preserving visual perception modeling

This paper presents a robust panoramic image mosaics scheme in the complex wavelet domain that employs the edge-preserving visual preceptive thresholding techniques. Complex wavelet transform guarantees both the scale and translation invariance for the image alignment, which enables us to calculate the transformation based on the correspondence in the wavelet domain and its application to the original image. The transformation obtained from the wavelet images is sufficiently accurate when applied to the original images due to the scale and translation invariance. In the wavelet domain, the coefficients can be compressed significantly (50-100 : 1 ratios) through the edge-preserving visual perception modeling while the details of the structured information can be retained. The complexity of the transformation calculation on the thresholded wavelet coefficients can be significantly reduced. Moreover, the transformation can be progressively refined through the multiresolution wavelet decomposition. It results in a mosaicking scheme with a great robustness and significantly better performance compared with the traditional mosaicking techniques with no or little loss of the visual quality of the images. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.