A "Keyframe Stitcher" provides an efficient technique for building mosaic
panoramic images by registering or aligning video frames to construct a
mosaic panoramic representation. Matching of image pairs is performed by
extracting feature points from every image frame and matching those
points between image pairs. Further, the Keyframe Stitcher preserves
accuracy of image stitching when matching image pairs by utilizing
ordering information inherent in the video. The cost of searching for
matches between image frames is reduced by identifying "keyframes" based
on computed image-to-image overlap. Keyframes are then matched to all
other keyframes, but intermediate image frames are only matched to
temporally neighboring keyframes and neighboring intermediate frames to
construct a "match structure." Image orientations are then estimated from
this match structure and used to construct the mosaic. Matches between
image pairs may be compressed to reduce computational overhead by
replacing groups of feature points with representative measurements.