Robust multisensor image registration with partial distance merits

Challenge in the registration of battlefield images in visible and far-infrared bands is the feature inconsistency. We use a contour-based approach and propose robust free-form curve-matching algorithms using the adaptive hill climbing and the iterative closest point algorithm. Both algorithms do not require explicit curve feature correspondence, are designed to be robust against outliers. The originality of this work is the use of the mean partial distance as the objective function in the iterative closest point algorithm, so that outliers can be easily handled by using rank order statistics. A fast algorithm using the segment representation of Voronoi diagram for the nearest point transform and the distance transform is used.