US 9,792,709 B1Granted

Apparatus and methods for image alignment

AssigneeGoPro, Inc.

InventorAntoine Meler

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Abstract

Multiple images may be combined to obtain a composite image. Individual images may be obtained with different camera sensors and/or at different time instances. In order to obtain the composite image source images may be aligned in order to produce a seamless stitch. Source images may be characterized by a region of overlap. A disparity measure may be determined for pixels along a border region between the source images. A warp transformation may be determined using an optimizing process configured to determine displacement of pixels of the border region based on the disparity. Pixel displacement at a given location may be constrained to direction configured tangential to an epipolar line corresponding to the location. The warp transformation may be propagated to pixels of the image. Spatial and/or temporal smoothing may be applied. In order to obtain optimized solution, the warp transformation may be determined at multiple spatial scales.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A computerized system configured to obtain a composite image, the system comprising:

a capture device configured to obtain source images, the source images including a first source image and a second source image;
and
one or more physical processors configured by machine-readable instructions to:
identify overlapping portions of the source images, such overlapping portions including a first portion comprised of a first plurality of pixels within the first source image and a second portion comprised of a second plurality of pixels within the second source image;
obtain a disparity measure for corresponding locations in the first source image and the second source image based on an evaluation of pixels of the first plurality of pixels and pixels of the second plurality of pixels at the corresponding locations;
apply a transformation operation to at least pixels within the overlapping portions of the source images to generate transformed source images, the transformation operation configured to displace pixels of one or both of the first plurality of pixels and/or the second plurality of pixels to reduce the disparity measure;
and
obtain the composite image by combining the transformed source images.

5 more elements

A capture apparatus, comprising:

a first lens optically coupled to a first image sensor configured to obtain a first source image;
a second lens optically coupled to a second image sensor configured to obtain a second source image;
a processor in operable communication with the first image sensor and the second image sensor;
a non-transitory storage medium configured to store a plurality of computer instructions which when executed by the processor:
identify a boundary region between the first source image and the second source image, the boundary region comprised of first pixels of the first source image and second pixels of the second source image;
obtain a disparity measure based on an evaluation of one or more of the first pixels and one or more of the second pixels disposed at a given location within the boundary region, the given location having an epipolar line associated therewith;
and
apply a transformation operation configured to displace pixels within the boundary region along a direction configured tangential to the epipolar line for the given location;
wherein
the first lens is characterized by a first optical center location and the second lens is characterized by a second optical center location;
the epipolar line comprises a segment configured to connect the first optical center location, the second optical center location, and the given location;
and
the transformation operation is configured to reduce the disparity measure.

10 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.