A Space-Sweep Approach to True Multi- Image Matching

The problem of determining feature correspondences across multiple views is considered. The term "true multi-image " matching is introduced to describe techniques that make full and efficient use of the geometric relationships between multiple images and the scene. A true multi-image technique must gen-eralize to any number of images, be of linear algo-rithmic complexity in the number of images, and use all the images in an equal manner. A new space-sweep approach to true multi-image matching is presented that simultaneously determines 2D fea-ture correspondences and the 3D positions of feature points in the scene. The method is illustrated on a seven-image matching example from the aerial im-age domain.