Extension of phase correlation to subpixel registration

Abstract

In this paper, we have derived analytic expressions for the phase correlation of downsampled images. We have shown that for downsampled images the signal power in the phase correlation is not concentrated in a single peak, but rather in several coherent peaks mostly adjacent to each other. These coherent peaks correspond to the polyphase transform of a filtered unit impulse centered at the point of registration. The analytic results provide a closed-form solution to subpixel translation estimation, and are used for detailed error analysis. Excellent results have been obtained for subpixel translation estimation of images of different nature and across different spectral bands.