Quasi-Dense Matching for Oblique Stereo Images through Semantic Segmentation and Local Feature Enhancement

This paper proposes a quasi-dense feature matching algorithm that combines image semantic segmentation and local feature enhancement networks to address the problem of the poor matching of image features because of complex distortions, considerable occlusions, and a lack of texture on large oblique stereo images. First, a small amount of typical complex scene data are used to train the VGG16-UNet, followed by completing the semantic segmentation of multiplanar scenes across large oblique images. Subsequently, the prediction results of the segmentation are subjected to local adaptive optimization to obtain high-precision semantic segmentation results for each planar scene. Afterward, the LoFTR (Local Feature Matching with Transformers) strategy is used for scene matching, enabling enhanced matching for regions with poor local texture in the corresponding planes. The proposed method was tested on low-altitude large baseline stereo images of complex scenes and compared with five classical matching methods. Results reveal that the proposed method exhibits considerable advantages in terms of the number of correct matches, correct rate of matches, matching accuracy, and spatial distribution of corresponding points. Moreover, it is well-suitable for quasi-dense matching tasks of large baseline stereo images in complex scenes with considerable viewpoint variations.