Visible and infrared image registration based on region features and edginess

Visible and infrared image registration is required for multi-sensor fusion and cooperative processing. However, traditional single-sensor image registration methods are generally not feasible as multi-sensor images are often loosely related and show different properties in imaging. This paper presents a coarse-to-fine procedure for registering visible and infrared images based on stable region features and edginess. Zernike moments are used to describe salient region features for a coarse registration, and an entropy optimal process based on edginess is used to refine the registration to achieve a more accurate result. Experiments show that the proposed method provides more robust and accurate registration than the existing methods.