A ways-free registration method and its application in 3-D data fusion Kou Xinyu, Wang Zhong, Chen Mingzhou, Ye Shenghua State Key Laboratory of Precision Measuring Technology and Instruments of Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, P.R.China ABSTRACT This paper presents a new ways-free image registration method based on adherent mark recognition method. Accurate 3-D coordinates are first got in each unit-measurement and then all the unit-data information are amalgamated into a communal coordinate system. The stereovision based 3-D profilometer computes at least three marks' 3-D coordinates first and then these coordinates are applied to calibrate the translation and orientation matrix between the two different inspection positions. This method allows any freedom of translation or orientation between every two unit-measurements without special constraints. With all ofthe six possible freedom transformations, the system's flexibility and adaptability are greatly enhanced, so the objects under inspection can be measured according to their inherent shapes at each optimal angle of view. As there needs no redundant ways in the measurement, the portable on-spot inspection becomes feasible. The paper analyzes two different amalgamation algorithms in detail and finally computer simulation results are given. Keywords: Stereovision, Epipolar constraint, 3-D Measurement, Image registration, Data fusion, Computer Vision 1. INTRODUCTION It is ambivalent to inspect large field objects and to get high accuracy at the same time. The measurement range is usually enlarged at the cost of worse precision. In the past decades of years, many scholars took great efforts to solve this problem by applying image registration method '- Most oftraditional image registration techniques are used in medicine or biology fields, where the correlation of each image provides registration information as a media. The problem of these methods lies in its great consumption both in computation time and memory. Usually, interactive methods are applied to avoid such great computation. Human perception and judgments are needed which prevent the whole process from full automation and high efficiency. Another method to eliminate the computation in correlation estimation is to confine the registration in some motion freedoms so that the search dimensions can be limited within one-dimensional or two-dimensional fields. Although this can help to reduce the complexity, yet precise ways or rotation tables should be used which greatly reduced the flexibility and adaptability of an application. As the ways are usually positioned in laboratory environment, so the portable on-spot inspection becomes unfeasible. This paper presents a new method based on stereovision technique and correspondence coordinate transform. The 3-D inspection is composed oftwo typical stages, namely unit-measurements and image registration cycles. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the principle of unit 3-Dmeasurements. Section 3 describes the adherent mark constraint (AMC) and 3-D data fusion technique using correspondence coordinates transform. Section 4 studies the data fusion algorithm. Simulation experiments are provided in Section 5. Correspondence: Kou Xinyu, Email: kxy@eyou.com; Telephone: 86-22-2740-6643; Other author information: Wang Zhong, Email: wangzhong_tjueyou.com ; Chen Mingzhou, Email: ponycheneyou.com ; Ye Shenghua, Telephone: 86-22-2740-4778. Supported by the National Natural Fund Committee under Grant No. 50075063, supported by the Key Project Fund Committee ofMinistry of Education under Grant No.99140, P.R.China. Visualization and Optimization Techniques, Yair Censor, Mingyue Ding, Editors, Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4553 (2001) © 2001 SPIE · 0277-786X/01/$15.00 280 Downloaded from SPIE Digital Library on 14 Oct 2010 to 140.203.12.240. Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms