PRISM: Parallel Ray Interpolation for Stereo Mosaicing
Project Status: Complete (Years: 1998 – 2001)
Research Description
We have presented a novel method for automatically and efficiently generating stereoscopic mosaics by seamless registration of optical data collected by a video camera mounted on an airborne platform that mainly undergoes translating motion. The resultant mosaics are seamless and will exhibit correct three-dimensional (3D) views. The basic idea is to construct stereo mosaics before 3D recovery for applications such as image-based rendering and environmental monitoring. An important part of the work that follows is a new mosaic representation that can support seamless mosaicing under a rather general motion and also can capture inherent 3D information during the mosaic process. A parallel-perspective model is selected for representing mosaics in our approach since it is the closest form to the original perspective video sequence under large motion parallax, yet its geometry allows us to generate seamless stereo mosaics. To accomplish this, we propose a novel technique called PRISM (parallel ray interpolation for stereo mosaicing) to efficiently convert the sequence of perspective images with dramatically changing viewpoints into the parallel-perspective stereo mosaics.
Sponsors
National Science Foundation (Grant Number EIA- 9726401), Automatic Interpretation of High-Altitude Image Data for Eco-System Modeling, 02/01/98–01/31/01