Seam-line determination for image mosaicking: A technique minimizing the maximum local mismatch and the global cost

This paper presents a novel algorithm that selects seam-lines for mosaicking image patches. This technique uses Dijkstra's algorithm to find a seam-line with the minimal objective function. Since a segment of seam-line with significant mismatch, even if it is short, is more visible than a lengthy one with small differences, a direct summation of the mismatch scores is inadequate. Limiting the level of the maximum difference along a seam-line should be part of the objective in the seam-line selection process. Our technique first determines this desired level of maximum difference, then applies Dijkstra's algorithm to find the best seam-line. A quantitative measure to evaluate a seam-line is proposed. The measure is defined as the sum of a fixed number of top mismatch scores. The proposed algorithm is compared with other techniques quantitatively and visually about various types of images.