Single-Perspective Warps in Natural Image Stitching

Results of image stitching can be perceptually divided into single-perspective and multiple-perspective. Compared to the multiple-perspective result, the single-perspective result excels in perspective consistency but suffers from projective distortion. In this paper, we propose two single-perspective warps for natural image stitching. The first one is a parametric warp, which is an incremental combination of the dual-feature-based as-projective-as-possible warp and the quasi-homography warp. The second one is a mesh-based warp, which is determined by optimizing a total energy function that simultaneously emphasizes different characteristics of the single-perspective warp, including alignment, distortion and saliency. A comprehensive evaluation demonstrates that the proposed warp outperforms some state-of-the-art warps in urban scenes, including APAP, AutoStitch, SPHP and GSP.