Image alignment is one of the crucial steps in the process of image analysis in the field of computer vision. This is evident in the task at hand, which aims to align images as part of a broader project to monitor tomato growth. We have RGBD and multispectral images captured by two different sensors, resulting in incomplete mutual alignment and parallax between images of the same scene, as well as differences in their sizes. The alignment was carried out in three steps. In the first step, traditional feature-based alignment methods (with some elements of deep learning) were employed, using the SuperGlue algorithm to obtain matching points and the OpenCV library to estimate the transformation. The second step involves the alignment of the 2D multispectral images with the 3D point cloud derived from the depth and RGB images aligned in the first step. For this purpose, we used a program referred to as MCPCIA (Multimodal Colored Point Cloud to Image Alignment). The result of the alignment is an RGB image with several dark areas, which are a consequence of the 3D transformation. These areas were removed in the final, third step of our process by back-projecting the 2D image into 3D space and interpolating using the nearest neighbor principle in the point cloud. The analysis of the results showed satisfactory performance of the alignment algorithm, provided that the input data meet certain criteria (specified later). It was found that the results could be further improved by using higher quality depth images in the point cloud generation process.
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