Published in

Optica, Optics Continuum, 5(3), p. 649, 2024

DOI: 10.1364/optcon.525065

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Normalized weighted cross correlation for multi-channel image registration

Journal article published in 2024 by Gastón A. Ayubi ORCID, Bartlomiej Kowalski ORCID, Alfredo Dubra ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The normalized cross-correlation (NCC) is widely used for image registration due to its simple geometrical interpretation and being feature-agnostic. Here, after reviewing NCC definitions for images with an arbitrary number of dimensions and channels, we propose a generalization in which each pixel value of each channel can be individually weighted using real non-negative numbers. This generalized normalized weighted cross-correlation (NWCC) and its zero-mean equivalent (ZNWCC) can be used, for example, to prioritize pixels based on signal-to-noise ratio. Like a previously defined NWCC with binary weights, the proposed generalizations enable the registration of uniformly, but not necessarily isotropically, sampled images with irregular boundaries and/or sparse sampling. All NCC definitions discussed here are provided with discrete Fourier transform (DFT) formulations for fast computation. Practical aspects of NCC computational implementation are briefly discussed, and a convenient function to calculate the overlap of uniformly, but not necessarily isotropically, sampled images with irregular boundaries and/or sparse sampling is introduced, together with its DFT formulation. Finally, examples illustrate the benefit of the proposed normalized cross-correlation functions.