Abstract Digital Stereo Image Matching Techniques

Commission III/4 This paper presents an overview of the various classes of algorithms in use for matching points from one digital image of a stereo pair with the corresponding points in the second image of the pair. These techniques primarily use area-based measures, such as correlation between image patches, or edge-based methods that match linear features in images, but also include the use of feature extractors to match single points in images, as well as global optimization techniques that simultaneously match all points in the two images. This paper also describes an automatic system developed at SRI for stereo compilation; this system uses area-based cor-relation, but applies this basic technique in a variety of novel ways to develop a disparity model for a given stereo image pair. The techniques used are hierarchical in nature, and incorporate iterative refinement, as well as a best-first strategy, in the matching process. To illustrate these techniques, the results of this system on the Image Matching Test A data set recently distributed by ISPRS's Working Group III/4 are presented. Introd uction Automatic techniques for the production of three-dimensional (3-D) data via stereo conlpila