A panorama generation method based on the geodesic constraint

Parallax processing and structure preservation pose significant challenges in image stitching. This paper introduces an image stitching method that addresses local alignment and line structure preservation in four-lens panoramic cameras through content-preserving warpping and the geodesic constraint. Recognizing that lines in fisheye images are curved(the curved lines are defined as the geodesic lines) and correspond to great spherical circles centered at the camera’s optical center, we utilize the Hough method to detect geodesic lines in the image warped by spherical projection. Subsequently, we incorporate the geodesic structure constraint into content-preserving warping to ensure the detected geodesic lines falling onto a large circle of the projection sphere and maintain line structures in panoramas during local alignment. Our experiments demonstrate that this approach effectively detects more and longer lines in images warped by spherical projection. Moreover, incorporating the geodesic constraint into content-preserving warping not only aligns images but also maintains local boundaries, ensuring that the lines in the perspective images exported from the panorama are straight.