Registration of street-level imagery to 3D building models

A method of aligning image data to a building model comprising acts of:

• capturing street-level building image data information;
• assigning a source location to the street-level building image data information;
• determining a building skyline, building edge, and a building facade depth in the street-level building image data information;
• extracting model information corresponding to a location associated with the street-level building image data information from aerial data;
• generating a figure of merit function based on the distance between the building skyline, building edge, and building facade depth and corresponding elements of the model information;
• applying the figure of merit function to the corresponding elements of the street-level building image data information and the aerial data for a plurality of locations along a street-scene and linearly combining the respective figures of merit for each of the plurality of locations;
• calculating a displacement factor based on an analysis of an output of the figure of merit function;
• modifying the source location by iteratively applying and recalculating the displacement factor to the source location;
• aligning the street-level building image data information to the building model using the source location modified by the displacement factor;
• and
• utilizing a processor to execute instructions stored in memory to perform at least one of the acts of capturing, assigning, determining, extracting, generating, applying, calculation, modifying or aligning.

A system comprising a computer-readable memory having computer-executable instructions for executing a method comprising acts of:

• capturing street-level building information including street-scene image data;
• assigning a source location to the street-level building information;
• determining a building skyline, building edge, and a building facade depth in the street-level building information;
• extracting a building model from aerial data corresponding to a location associated with the street-level building information;
• generating a figure of merit function based on a comparison of the building skyline, building edge, and building facade depth and corresponding elements of the building model;
• applying the figure of merit function to the corresponding elements of the street-level building information and the building model based on the aerial data for a plurality of locations along a street-scene and linearly combining resulting respective figures of merit for each of the plurality of locations;
• determining a displacement factor based on an analysis of an output of the figure of merit function;
• modifying the source location by iteratively applying the displacement factor to the source location to refine accuracy of the source location;
• aligning the street-scene image data to the building model using the source location modified by the displacement factor;
• and
• a processor that executes the computer-executable instructions associated with at least one of the acts of capturing, assigning, determining, extracting, generating, applying, modifying, or aligning.