Efficient image registration with subpixel accuracy

Abstract : The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, a new spatial domain image registration technique with subpixel accuracy is presented. This technique is based on a double maximization of the correlation coefficient and provides a closed-form solu- tion to the subpixel translation estimation problem. Second, an efficient iterative scheme for integer registration is proposed, which reduces significantly the number of searches, as com- pared to the exhaustive search. This scheme can be used as a pre-processing step in the sub-pixel accuracy technique, lead- ing to lower computational complexity. Extensive simulation results have shown that the performance of the proposed tech- nique compares very favorably with respect to existing ones.