Geometric alignment of two overlapping range images

We propose a novel geometric method for the alignment of two overlapping range images. The method first employs the traditional iterative closest point (ICP) criterion to establish a set of possible correspondences and then refine these correspondences using geometric constraints derived from properties of reflected correspondence vectors. In this way, the method overcomes a major limitation of the traditional ICP criterion which is the introduction of false matches in almost every iteration of the alignment. For an accurate estimation of the geometric parameters of interest, the Monte Carlo method is used in conjunction with a median filter. Finally, the quaternion method is used to estimate the motion parameters based on the refined correspondences. Experimental results based on both synthetic data and real images show that the proposed method can effectively align two overlapping range images with a small motion.