A robust pipeline for rapid feature-based pre-alignment of dense range scans

Aiming at reaching an interactive and simplified usage of high-resolution 3D acquisition systems, this paper presents a fast and automated technique for pre-alignment of dense range images. Starting from a multi-scale feature point extraction and description, a processing chain composed by feature matching and correspondence searching, ranking grouping and skimming is performed to select the most reliable correspondences over which the correct alignment is estimated. Pre-alignment is obtained in few seconds per million point images on a off-the-shelf PC architecture. The experimental setup aimed to demonstrate the system behavior with respect to a set of concurrent requirements and the obtained performance are significant in the perspective of a fast, robust and unconstrained 3D object reconstruction.