Combination of SIFT and Canny Edge Detection for Registration Between SAR and Optical Images

Scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) has been successfully used for optical image registration, but it cannot produce satisfying results when directly applied to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. In the present study, a novel method is proposed for registration between SAR and optical images. First, candidate keypoints are detected using SIFT algorithm. Then, Canny edge detection algorithm is adopted to remove the edge points which are wrong candidate points. Next, SIFT descriptors are generated from these correct keypoints. Last, the fast library for approximate nearest neighbors (FLANNs) algorithm is applied to search matching points in high-dimensional space. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is significantly more accurate and much faster than the original SIFT algorithm.