Image mosaicing using sequential bundle adjustment

We describe the construction of accurate panoramic mosaics from multiple images taken with a rotating camera, or alternatively of a planar scene. The novelty of the approach lies in (i) the transfer of photogrammetric bundle adjustment techniques to mosaicing; (ii) a new representation of image line measurements enabling the use of lines in camera self-calibration, including computation of the radial and other non-linear distortion; and (iii) the application of the variable state dimension filter to obtain efficient sequential updates of the mosaic as each image is added. We demonstrate that our method achieves better results than the alternative approach of optimising over pairs of images. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.