Patent ID: 8705890

Claim:
A method for aligning a first digital image and a second digital image using an electronic computing system comprising: creating by said electronic computing system a plurality of first image tiles for said first digital image and a plurality of second image tiles for said second digital image that are equal sized sub-images of said first digital image and of said second digital image, respectively, each tile of said plurality of first image tiles and of said plurality of second image tiles further containing location information that identifies a pixel location of each tile within said parent first digital image and said parent second digital image, respectively; computing by said electronic computing system first image tile key representations for each first image tile of said plurality of first image tiles and second image tile key representations for each second image tile of said plurality of second image tiles using a frequency-domain transform calculation of each tile; computing by said electronic computing system first image tile pair key differences for each possible pair of first image tiles for said plurality of first image tiles using an information-distance metric calculation; identifying a subset of first image distinguishing feature tiles of said first image that have large discrimination metrics compared to other tiles of said first image based on said computed first image tile pair key differences; comparing by said electronic computing system said first image tile key representations of said subset of first image distinguishing feature tiles of said first image to said second image tile key representations of said plurality of second image tiles; identifying by said electronic computing system from said comparison of said subset of first image tiles to said plurality of second image tiles at least one first image tile key representation of said first digital image that is substantially similar to at least one second image tile key representation of said second digital image; and aligning by said electronic computing system said first digital image with said second digital image based on said identified at least one first image tile and said at least one second image tile that have a substantially similar first image tile key representation and second image tile key representation, respectively, in accord with said pixel location of each tile within said parent first digital image and said parent second digital image, respectively.