An automatic registration algorithm for two overlapping range images

This paper describes a method of automatically performing the registration of two range images that have significant overlap. We first find points of interest in the intensity data that comes with each range image. Then we perform a tetrahedrization of the 3D range points associated with these 2D interest points. The triangle pairs of these tetrahedrizations are then matched in order to compute the registration. The fact that we have 3D data available makes it possible to efficiently prune potential matches. The best match is the one that aligns the largest number of interest points between the two images. The algorithms axe demonstrated experimentally on a number of different range image pairs.