Color correction for image stitching by monotone cubic spline interpolation

This paper proposes a novel color correction scheme for image stitching where the color map transfer is modeled by a monotone Hermite cubic spline and smoothly propagated into the target image. A three-segments monotone cubic spline minimizing color distribution statistics and gradient differences with respect to both the source and target images is used. While the spline model can handle non-linear color maps, the minimization over the gradient differences limits strong alterations on the image structure. Adaptive heuristics are introduced to reduce the minimization search space and thus computational time. Experimental comparisons with respect to the state-of-the-art linear mapping models show the validity of the proposed method.