A novel image mosaic method based on improved SIFT algorithm and Contourlet Transform

The two key steps in image mosaic process are image registration and image fusion. The common SIFT algorithm needs complicated calculation, which wastes too much time in practical image registration. This problem is solved in this paper by giving the feature point in SIFT a more accurate main direction. Thus, the SIFT can be more easily used. Based on this improved SIFT algorithm, a new image mosaic method is proposed by combining it with the Contourlet Transform. An advantage of using Contourlet Transform in image fusion is that it can eliminate the color difference and make the merged picture clear. In this new method, the improved SIFT is used to do the registration work and the Contourlet Transform is adopted to merge the two images after registration. An experiment is also conducted in this paper to assess the stitching effect of the proposed method. The experiment result shows that this new method can accelerate the SIFT process in image registration and enhance the image mosaic effect.