Fast Image Labeling for Creating High-Resolution Panoramic Images on Mobile Devices

We present an image labeling approach for merging a set of aligned source images into a composite image by finding optimal seams in the overlapping areas of the source images quickly and using little memory. A minimal-cost path in the overlapping area of two images is found by dynamic programming and used as an optimal seam to label images. The overlapping images are cut along the seam and merged together. A sequential image stitching procedure is integrated with the fast image labeling for producing high-resolution and high-quality panoramic images using large source images under limited computational and memory resources. The approach presents several advantages: the use of dynamic programming optimization for finding the minimal-cost path over adjacent source images guarantees finding the optimal seam and allows images to be merged quickly; ghosting and blurring problems caused by moving objects and small registration errors can be avoided by the optimal seam finding process; the combination of the sequential image stitching procedure with the fast image labeling allows processing large source images for creating high-resolution panoramic images using little memory; the fast labeling process is easy to combine with intensive blending to produce high-quality panoramic images. The method is implemented in our mobile panorama system and runs with good performance on mobile devices.