Harris Corporation

Joseph K Bryan

David Monroe Bell

Stephen B Black

First and second digital images, such as terrestrial images captured by one or more spaceborne or airborne sensors, are transformed onto a registration surface in accordance with geometry models of the sensors, to bring the digital images into mutual alignment on the registration surface. The images are initially subsampled to obtain reduced spatial resolution versions of each image. For a base resolution version of each image, respective neighborhoods of pixels associated with matching point grids in each image are defined. Edge-preemphasized contents of respective neighborhoods of pixels of each image are cross-correlated with one another, to derive a measure of misregistration between the images. One or both of the geometry models of the sensors are modified in accordance with the measure of misregistration, so as to effectively decrease misregistration between the images on the registration surface. The neighborhood cross-correlation process is then repeated for increasingly higher spatial resolution versions of each image, to effect a coarse-to-fine improvement in registration error correction.

Mechanism for registering digital images obtained from multiple sensors

A screen-to-registration surface interface translates coordinate system parameters associated with screen-base image manipulation software to latitude and longitude parameters of a co-registration surface-based coordinate system. By invoking a data file linking mechanism of the `windows`-based display and manipulation software, the user may specify a given image manipulation operation to be executed with respect to plural images that have been imported into respective windows of the display. The registration surface coordinate system parameters are compatible with image collection geometry models. These values are then transformed by the respective collection geometry models to the respective digital image files of the linked images. To display these new pixel values, the geometry models associated with the respective digital images imported to the display screen are mapped by a cascaded mapping function, which cascades the image database-to-registration surface translation of the collection geometry model with the registration surface-to-screen coordinate transform, thereby coupling the new pixel values at the image array locations in the database specified by the manipulation parameters to the output display for exploitation by the user.

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West Melbourne, FL, United States of America

Joseph K Bryan