Local image registration: an adaptive filtering framework

We present a novel local image registration method based on adaptive filtering techniques. The proposed method utilizes an adaptive filter to track smoothly, locally varying changes in the motion field between the images. Image pixels are traversed following a scanning order established by Hilbert curves to preserve the contiguity in the 2-D image plane. We have performed experiments using both simulated images and real images captured by a digital camera. The proposed adaptive filtering framework has been shown by experimental results to give superior performance compared to global 2-D parametric registration and Lucas-Kanade optical flow technique when the image motion consists of mostly translational motion. The simulation experiments show that the proposed image registration technique can also handle small amounts of rotation, scale and perspectivity in the motion field.