An Automatic Registration Algorithm of Infrared and Visible Images Based on Hybrid Image Features

In this paper, a new method is presented to match a pair of visible and infrared images of same scene based on hybrid visual features including line segments and interest points. First, improved Harris corner extraction method and line segment detector method is used to extract feature points and segments. Then, a novel descriptor integrating the information of line segments and interest points is proposed. Finally, the nearest neighbor algorithm is utilized to match the descriptors, and the RANSAC(Random Sample Consensus) algorithm is employed to rule out the wrong match pairs. The performances are evaluated by extensive experiments on real images. The results show that the proposed algorithm can take advantage of similar structures between the multimodal images to realize automatic matching efficiently.