ELIMINATING STRUCTURE MISALIGNMENTS USING ROBUST MATCHING AND IMAGE EDITING BASED ON SEAM CARVING

In this paper, we propose an algorithm that generates a natural composite from the misaligned images. The image stitching for this purpose is usually performed in two steps: correspondence matching of salient features followed by appropriated warping or editing. The proposed correspondence matching problem is formulated as the one-dimensional registration along the stitching boundary, where an appropriate energy function is proposed. The designed energy function consists of three complementary terms that encode appearance, smoothness and ordering of points, whereas the existing method considers the edge strength and ordering. Then we develop an algorithm that makes several salient points move to desired positions by using seam carving/inserting, which produces visually pleasing results compared to the conventional warping methods with less computations. The experimental results show that the proposed method efficiently and robustly generates natural composite images.