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We have presented a novel method for automatically and efficiently generating stereoscopic mosaics by seamless registration of optical data collected by a video camera mounted on an airborne platform that mainly undergoes translating motion. The resultant mosaics are seamless and will exhibit correct three-dimensional (3D) views. The basic idea is to construct stereo mosaics before 3D recovery for applications such as image-based rendering and environmental monitoring. Four critical issues will be discussed : (1) Under what kinds of motion can we construct a pair of 2D stereo mosaics before we recover any 3D information? (2) How to make stereo mosaics seamless in the presence of motion parallax and for rather arbitrary scenes? (3) What is the epipolar geometry of multi-perspective stereo mosaics generated under rather general motion? (4) What are the benefits of generating stereo mosaics in computation, storage, 3D resolution and 3D visualization?  The software package of geo-mosaics and stereo mosaics is being used in multiple projects at UMass with aerial video, ground video and under-vehicle video, and by our collaborators, such as UCSB, The Nature Conservancy, Harvard Forest and other major environmental groups.

Related  Publications:

1. Z. Zhu, A. R. Hanson, Mosaic-Based 3D Scene Representation and Rendering, Special Session on Interactive Representation of Still and Dynamic Scenes, the Eleventh International Conference on Image   Processing, Genova, Italy, September  11-14,  2005, pp I-633 -636.
<>Z. Zhu, E. M. Riseman, A. R. Hanson and H. Schultz, An Efficient Method for Geo-Referenced Video Mosaicing for Environmental Monitoring.  Machine Vision Applications Journal,  16(4), 2005, 203-126

2. Z. Zhu, E. M. Riseman, A. R. Hanson, Generalized Parallel-Perspective Stereo Mosaics from Airborne Videos, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 26, no. 2, Feb 2004, pp 226-237. 
3. Z. Zhu, Stereo Mosaics with Slant Parallel Projections from Many Cameras or a Moving Camera. AIPR 2003: Imagery and Data Fusion, Washington DC, October 15-17, 2003
4.   Z. Zhu, A. R. Hanson, H. Schultz and E. M. Riseman,Generation and error characteristics of parallel-perspective stereo mosaics from real video, book chapter in Video Registration, Mubarak Shah and Rakesh Kumar (Eds.), Video Computing Series, Kluwer Academic Publisher, Boston, May 2003: 72-105.
5. Zhigang Zhu, Allen R. Hanson, Harpal S. Bassali, Howard  J. Schultz, Edward M. Riseman, GENERATING SEAMLESS STEREO MOSAICS FROM AERIAL VIDEO, ASPRS 18th Biennial Workshop on Color Photography & Videography in Resource Assessment, May 16-18, 2001,  University of Massachusetts, Amherst (PowerPoint Represntation,4.8MB).
6. Z. Zhu, A. R. Hanson, H. Schultz, E. M. Riseman, Error characteristics of parallel-perspective stereo mosaics, IEEE Workshop on Video Registration (with ICCV’01), Vancouver, Canada, July 13, 2001.
7. Z. Zhu, E. M. Riseman, A. R. Hanson, Parallel-perspective stereo mosaics, The Eighth IEEE  International Conference on Computer Vision, Vancouver, Canada, July 2001.
8. Z. Zhu, E. M. Riseman, A. R. Hanson, Theory and practice in making seamless stereo mosaics from airborne video, Technical Report TR#01-01, Computer Science Department, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, January, 2001 (UM-CS-2001-001.pdf, 8.75MB).
9. Z. Zhu, A. R. Hanson, H. Schultz, F. Stolle, E. M. Riseman, Stereo Mosaics from a Moving Video Camera for Environmental Monitoring, First International Workshop on Digital and Computational Video, December 10, 1999, Tampa, Florida, USA, pp. 45-54 (zhudcv99.ps, 2.2MB).
10. Z. Zhu, E. M. Riseman, A. R. Hanson, H. Schultz, "Automatic Geo-Correction of Video Mosaics for Environmental Monitoring", Technical Report TR #99-28, Computer Science Department, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, April, 1999  (UMASSTR99-28.ps.gz, 3.34 MB).

Collaborators:

Edward M. Riseman, Professor
Allen R. Hanson, Professor
Howard Schultz, Senior Research Scientist
Frank Stolle,  Ph.D. student
Harpal S. Bassali, graduate student
Chris Holmes, system programmer

Dana M. Slaymaker, Research Faculty
Chris Hayward, graduate student

National Science Foundation Project (Grant Number EIA- 9726401), Automatic Interpretation of High-Altitude Image Data for Eco-System Modeling, $1,800,000, 02/01/98 – 01/31/01, PI (Riseman), Co-PIs (Hanson, Slaymaker)