Image similarity metrics suitable for infrared video stabilization during active wildfire monitoring: a comparative analysis

Aerial Thermal Infrared (TIR) imagery has demonstrated tremendous potential to monitor active forest fires and acquire detailed information about fire behavior. However, aerial video is usually unstable and requires inter-frame registration before further processing. Measurement of image misalignmen...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Mata Miquel, Cristian|||0000-0003-4768-5062, Ríos, Oriol, Pastor Ferrer, Elsa|||0000-0002-2985-3635, Planas Cuchi, Eulàlia|||0000-0002-7053-3959
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/191203
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/191203
https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs12030540
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Remote sensing
Wildland fire
Infrared imagery
Video stabilization
Image registration
Sensitivity analysis
Image similarity
Incendis
Teledetecció
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria química
Descripción
Sumario:Aerial Thermal Infrared (TIR) imagery has demonstrated tremendous potential to monitor active forest fires and acquire detailed information about fire behavior. However, aerial video is usually unstable and requires inter-frame registration before further processing. Measurement of image misalignment is an essential operation for video stabilization. Misalignment can usually be estimated through image similarity, although image similarity metrics are also sensitive to other factors such as changes in the scene and lighting conditions. Therefore, this article presents a thorough analysis of image similarity measurement techniques useful for inter-frame registration in wildfire thermal video. Image similarity metrics most commonly and successfully employed in other fields were surveyed, adapted, benchmarked and compared. We investigated their response to different camera movement components as well as recording frequency and natural variations in fire, background and ambient conditions. The study was conducted in real video from six fire experimental scenarios, ranging from laboratory tests to large-scale controlled burns. Both Global and Local Sensitivity Analyses (GSA and LSA, respectively) were performed using state-of-the-art techniques. Based on the obtained results, two different similarity metrics are proposed to satisfy two different needs. A normalized version of Mutual Information is recommended as cost function during registration, whereas 2D correlation performed the best as quality control metric after registration.