Registration of visible and near infrared unmanned aerialvehicle images based on Fourier-Mellin transform

International audience; The combination of aerial images acquired in the visible and near infrared spectral ranges is particularly relevant for agricultural and environmental survey. In unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery, such a combination can be achieved using a set of several embedded cameras mounted close to each other, followed by an image registration step. However, due to the different nature of source images, usualregistration techniques based on feature point matching are limited when dealing with blended vegetation and bare soil patterns. Here, another approach is proposed based on i mage spatial frequency analysis. This approach, which relies on the Fourier-Mellin transform, has been adapted to homographic registration and distortion issues. It has been successfully tested on various aerial image sets, and has proved to be particularly robust and accurate, providing a registration error below 0.3 pixels in most cases.