Fast mosaic method of aerial reconnaissance images using affine transform and cross-correlation

A fast image mosaic method is proposed for an aerial reconnaissance CCD camera. In this method, parameters of affine transformation were first evaluated by using the work parameters of the camera, which can supply a rough registration area of images. Then, the image cross-correlation was employed to obtain a higher precision in the affine transformation parameters by searching this rough area. Finally, a bilinear interpolation method was used to fuse the overlapping area of images. Experimental results of this method prove that it can reduce the processing time effectively, abate the requirements for image processing hardware, and prevent the wrong matching caused by only using cross-correlation method. Images generated by the method can meet the requirements of camera systems.