Sequential Hierarchical Scene Matching

The general approach to matching two scenes by a digital computer is usually costly in computations. A match is determined by selecting the position of maximum cross correlation between the window and each possible shift position of the search region. A new approach which is logarithmically efficient is presented in this paper. Its logarithmic efficiency and computational savings will be demonstrated both theoretically and in practical examples. Experimental results are presented for matching an image region corrupted by noise and for matching images from optical and radar sensors. The significance of this approach is that scene matching can be accomplished by the use of a computer even in cases which are difficult for humans or standard correlation techniques, and can be accomplished with greatly reduced computations.