Image registration using robust M-estimators

In this paper, a method for robust image registration based on M-estimator Correlation Coefficient (MCC) is presented. A real valued correlation mask function is computed using Huber and Tukey's robust statistics and is used as a similarity measure for registering image windows. The mask function suppresses the influence of outlier points and makes the registration algorithm robust to noisy pixels, brightness fluctuations and presence of occluding objects. The superiority of the proposed algorithm, in terms of registration performance and computation time is demonstrated through experimental studies on different types of real world images. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.