Robust and rapid matching of oblique UAV images of urban area

The robust and rapid matching of oblique UAV images of urban area remains a challenge until today. The method proposed in this paper, Nicer Affine Invariant Feature (NAIF), calculates the image view of an oblique image by making full use of the rough Exterior Orientation (EO) elements of the image, then recovers the oblique image to a rectified image by doing the inverse affine transform, and left over by the SIFT method. The significance test and the left-right validation have applied to the matching process to reduce the rate of mismatching. Experiments conducted on oblique UAV images of urban area demonstrate that NAIF takes about the same time as SIFT to match a pair of oblique images with a plenty of corresponding points and an extremely low mismatching rate. The new algorithm is a good choice for oblique UAV images considering the efficiency and effectiveness.

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