Multi-modal image registration using line features and mutual information

Mutual information (MI), as a similarity measure has been very successful in multi-modal image registration. However, the iterative nature of the method for finding optimal transformation makes it time consuming and mis-registration can happen due to local extrema. In this paper, a heuristic approach based on straight line detection and matching is proposed for rigid registration to speed up mutual information-based method and avoid local extrema by converting the 3-D optimization problem into a 1-D search along the corresponding lines. The proposed method is suitable for images rich with line segments, such as those used in remote sensing applications.