Automated Edge-based Seamline Extraction for Mosaicking of High-resolution Satellite Images

By the advent of the high resolution satellite imagery, a ground-coverage included by a single satellite image is decreased. By the reason, there are increasing needs in image mosaicking technology to use images to various GIS fields. This paper describes an edge-based seamline extraction algorithm using edge information such as rivers, roads, buildings for image mosaicking. For this, we developed a method to track and link discontinuous edges extracted by edge detection operator. To estimate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, we applied the algorithm to IKONOS, KOMPSAT-1 and SPOT-5 satellite images. The experimental results showed that the algorithm successfully dealts with discontinuities caused by geometric differences in two images.