ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
Publications Copernicus
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Articles | Volume II-1
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprsannals-II-1-37-2014
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprsannals-II-1-37-2014
07 Nov 2014
 | 07 Nov 2014

Least squares image matching: A comparison of the performance of robust estimators

Z. Li and J. Wang

Keywords: Least Squares Image Matching, Robust Estimators, Accuracy, Comparison, Systematic errors, Outliers

Abstract. Least squares image matching (LSM) has been extensively applied and researched for high matching accuracy. However, it still suffers from some problems. Firstly, it needs the appropriate estimate of initial value. However, in practical applications, initial values may contain some biases from the inaccurate positions of keypoints. Such biases, if high enough, may lead to a divergent solution. If all the matching biases have exactly the same magnitude and direction, then they can be regarded as systematic errors. Secondly, malfunction of an imaging sensor may happen, which generates dead or stuck pixels on the image. This can be referred as outliers statistically. Because least squares estimation is well known for its inability to resist outliers, all these mentioned deviations from the model determined by LSM cause a matching failure. To solve these problems, with simulation data and real data, a series of experiments considering systematic errors and outliers are designed, and a variety of robust estimation methods including RANSACbased method, M estimator, S estimator and MM estimator is applied and compared in LSM. In addition, an evaluation criterion directly related to the ground truth is proposed for performance comparison of these robust estimators. It is found that robust estimators show the robustness for these deviations compared with LSM. Among these the robust estimators, M and MM estimator have the best performances.