Stereo Mosaics from a Moving Video Camera for Environmental Monitoring

Environmental monitoring using automated analysis of high-resolution aerial video is an application of growing importance with its own set of technical challenges. A mosaic is a commonly used tool for representing the enormous amount of data generated from aerial video sequences in an easily viewable form. In contrast to the usual applications of mosaics, the environmental monitoring domain requires both geo-corrected mosaics tied to real-world coordinates and three-dimensional information. The standard techniques of generating seamless mosaics using only image data in a frame-by-frame image registration process cannot satisfy this requirement because registration errors accumulate over extended periods of time, and the mosaicing results are typically only 2D images that lose 3D information. On the other hand, 3D reconstruction of the terrain on a frame-by-frame base has proven to be both difficult and time-consuming. In this paper we will present a method for automatically and efficiently generating stereoscopic mosaics by seamless registration of optical data collected by a video camera mounted on an airborne platform. The resultant mosaics are globally correct with respect to the ground and exhibit correct 3D views when viewed stereoscopically.