Feature based remote sensing image registration techniques: a comprehensive and comparative review

Earth observation using remote sensing data is a trending research field across the globe. In this perspective, image registration is a mandatory data processing step for any kind of time series data analytics. Feature-based image registration is one of the prominent categories for superimposing multi-temporal and multi-modal images over each other. The paper provides a comprehensive and comparative survey of feature detection/description techniques for remote sensing images. In addition, outlier removal algorithms are explored in detail to generate putative keypoint correspondences for accurate transformation parameter estimation. The experiments are conducted on multiple remote sensing image pairs comprising visible, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and infrared images that provide diverse characteristics of the feature target. The co-registration accuracy is quantified for all possible combinations of feature detection/description with outlier removal, and best amalgamation is visually verified to check sub-pixel spatial alignment by swiping multi-temporal or multi-modal images over each other. It has been found that SIFT performs better in optical image registration, whereas A-KAZE feature detection has an upper edge at SAR image registration task. Marginalizing Sample Consensus (MAGSAC) and Mode Guided (MG) based outlier removal techniques achieves better pruning performance for multi-temporal optical and SAR images respectively. The comparative evaluation indicates that Motion Smoothness Constraint (MSC) optimization shows optimal performance for multi-modal remote sensing images. The best possible Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) achieved for multi-temporal optical images is 0.44 pixel whereas for multi-temporal SAR images, it is 0.46 pixels. The RMSE achieved for multi-modal images is 0.48 pixel using combination of SIFT with MSC.