Medical Image Stitching Using Hybrid of SIFT and SURF Methods

Image processing and analysis algorithms are widely used in medical systems to analyze medical images for diagnose the disease of a patient. This book covers one of the demanding problems of a medical system: Stitching of X-ray Images. The flat panel of an X-ray system cannot cover all parts of a body, So Image stitching is incorporated in the medical system to combine two or more X-ray images and get a single high resolution image. Image Stitching is a process of basically combining two or more images to form a panoramic image. Stitching includes two main parts: Image matching and Image blending. For Image Matching two algorithms are used SIFT and SURF. SIFT is more effective algorithm for scale and rotational image stitching but it cannot cope with illumination variation whereas SURF method provides better computation speed and it has the distinctive property of illumination invariance. So if responses from SIFT and SURF based algorithm combines they regenerates a panoramic image having the best features of both the algorithm.