ECC alignment is terribly slow

[tonyketcham]

trafficstars

Problem

The ECC image alignment implementation takes ~10 minutes to align a stack of 15 large (20MP) images. Although a noticeable improvement, the results are not perfect either. Some ghosting lines are still present from image misalignment.

Potential Solution

Bitmap alignment may prove much faster than ECC. Perhaps finding a rough homography first may even be faster.

[tonyketcham]

Switched ECC warp method to homography matrix for very noticeable improvement in quality of image alignment. Standalone homography warping prior would improve the runtime of the find/warpECC methods afterwards

[levyben]

I implemented the ECC algorithm on GPU hardware (C++). It significantly increase the speed, especially in large image cases... check https://github.com/levyben/gpu_ecc_alignment this can significantly improve the experience and quality of your project.