Stereoscopic determination of terrain elevation
US5309522A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Jun 30, 1992 |
| Grant date | May 3, 1994 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jun 30, 2012 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04N2013/0081
- WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Digitized stereo image pairs are analyzed by first aggregating the images to produce several levels of lower resolution images, bandpass filtering each of the images by applying a Laplacian filter to edge enhance the features, matching the features of low resolution images while generating a disparity image which contains elevation information, repeating the feature matching at successively higher resolutions and creating progressively improving disparity images, and extracting the elevation data from the final disparity image. The feature matching procedure uses an estimate of feature disparity to help locate a feature in one image which corresponds to a feature in another image and is applied iteratively at each level of resolution. Dilation of disparity data from matched points to neighboring unmatched areas produces a comprehensive disparity image which aids in more efficient feature location on the next pass.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.