Registering Aerial Video Images Using the Projective Constraint

To separate object motion from camera motion in an aerial video, consecutive frames are registered at their planar background. Feature points are selected in consecutive frames and those that belong to the background are identified using the projective constraint. Corresponding background feature points are then used to register and align the frames. By aligning video frames at the background and knowing that objects move against the background, a means to detect and track moving objects is provided. Only scenes with planar background are considered in this study. Experimental results show improvement in registration accuracy when using the projective constraint to determine the registration parameters as opposed to finding the registration parameters without the projective constraint.