Point Cloud Registration Based on Image Correspondences

Since the early '80s, when Digital Photogrammetry was in its infancy, important progress has been made in the area of automations using the most common photogrammetric procedures. The main objective of this paper is the full automation of 3D Point Cloud Registration process. In particular, an alternative registration method is being presented, based on corresponding points, which are detected on overlapping images that come with each scan using a structured light scanner. The algorithm detects corresponding points applying Feature Based Matching techniques. These are then interpolated directly to any given texture map, thereby the transition to correspondent 3D vertices is achieved. Finally, the algorithm computes the 3D Rigid Body transformation, which is applied to the 3D point clouds, in order to transform one scan's reference system into the other. Experimental results obtained by the proposed method are presented, evaluated and compared with those obtained by standard ICP implementation.