To Glue or Not to Glue? Classical vs Learned Image Matching for Mobile Mapping Cameras to Textured Semantic 3D Building Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gaisbauer, Simone, Gyawali, Prabin, Zhang, Qilin, Wysocki, Olaf, Jutzi, Boris
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Gaisbauer, Simone
Gyawali, Prabin
Zhang, Qilin
Wysocki, Olaf
Jutzi, Boris
author_facet Gaisbauer, Simone
Gyawali, Prabin
Zhang, Qilin
Wysocki, Olaf
Jutzi, Boris
contents Feature matching is a necessary step for many computer vision and photogrammetry applications such as image registration, structure-from-motion, and visual localization. Classical handcrafted methods such as SIFT feature detection and description combined with nearest neighbour matching and RANSAC outlier removal have been state-of-the-art for mobile mapping cameras. With recent advances in deep learning, learnable methods have been introduced and proven to have better robustness and performance under complex conditions. Despite their growing adoption, a comprehensive comparison between classical and learnable feature matching methods for the specific task of semantic 3D building camera-to-model matching is still missing. This submission systematically evaluates the effectiveness of different feature-matching techniques in visual localization using textured CityGML LoD2 models. We use standard benchmark datasets (HPatches, MegaDepth-1500) and custom datasets consisting of facade textures and corresponding camera images (terrestrial and drone). For the latter, we evaluate the achievable accuracy of the absolute pose estimated using a Perspective-n-Point (PnP) algorithm, with geometric ground truth derived from geo-referenced trajectory data. The results indicate that the learnable feature matching methods vastly outperform traditional approaches regarding accuracy and robustness on our challenging custom datasets with zero to 12 RANSAC-inliers and zero to 0.16 area under the curve. We believe that this work will foster the development of model-based visual localization methods. Link to the code: https://github.com/simBauer/To\_Glue\_or\_not\_to\_Glue
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_17973
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle To Glue or Not to Glue? Classical vs Learned Image Matching for Mobile Mapping Cameras to Textured Semantic 3D Building Models
Gaisbauer, Simone
Gyawali, Prabin
Zhang, Qilin
Wysocki, Olaf
Jutzi, Boris
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Feature matching is a necessary step for many computer vision and photogrammetry applications such as image registration, structure-from-motion, and visual localization. Classical handcrafted methods such as SIFT feature detection and description combined with nearest neighbour matching and RANSAC outlier removal have been state-of-the-art for mobile mapping cameras. With recent advances in deep learning, learnable methods have been introduced and proven to have better robustness and performance under complex conditions. Despite their growing adoption, a comprehensive comparison between classical and learnable feature matching methods for the specific task of semantic 3D building camera-to-model matching is still missing. This submission systematically evaluates the effectiveness of different feature-matching techniques in visual localization using textured CityGML LoD2 models. We use standard benchmark datasets (HPatches, MegaDepth-1500) and custom datasets consisting of facade textures and corresponding camera images (terrestrial and drone). For the latter, we evaluate the achievable accuracy of the absolute pose estimated using a Perspective-n-Point (PnP) algorithm, with geometric ground truth derived from geo-referenced trajectory data. The results indicate that the learnable feature matching methods vastly outperform traditional approaches regarding accuracy and robustness on our challenging custom datasets with zero to 12 RANSAC-inliers and zero to 0.16 area under the curve. We believe that this work will foster the development of model-based visual localization methods. Link to the code: https://github.com/simBauer/To\_Glue\_or\_not\_to\_Glue
title To Glue or Not to Glue? Classical vs Learned Image Matching for Mobile Mapping Cameras to Textured Semantic 3D Building Models
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17973