IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD FOR AUTOMATIC IMAGE REGISTRATION AND CORRECTION

There is provided an image processing method for use in a computer system having a database for storing a reference image, control point chips (CP chips) of the reference image, and auxiliary data including geographic coordinates, incidence angles and orientation angles of the reference image and the CP chips, comprising the steps of (a) a CP chip extraction step of, when a target image and auxiliary data including location information and incidence and orientation angle information of the target image are inputted, finding out a region of the reference image corresponding to a region including the target image, selecting the found region as a control region, and extracting the CP chips included in the control region of the reference image, (b) an image matching step of searching matching points of the target image for the control points within the CP chips extracted from the CP chip extraction step, (c) a mismatching point removing step of finding out and removing mismatching points among matching results obtained from step (b), and (d) a precise image correction step of arranging the target image into a geographic coordinate system using the matching results obtained after performing step (c).