Generation of Undistorted Photomosaics of Cylindrical Vesicular Basalt Specimens

Photographic documentation of prepared rock core specimens may be required for scientific studies. For specimens that have surface features which vary circumferentially, it is advantageous to have a single photomosaic of the specimen surface rather than a series of surface photographs. A technique to develop a photomosaic from a series of overlapping images of prepared vesicular basalt core specimens is presented. The overlapping images of the specimen surface are subjected to an initial cropping, a geometric transformation, an intensity interpolation, a final cropping, and an image stitching algorithm. The final result is an undistorted photomosaic of the entire specimen surface. All steps except the initial cropping are implemented within MATLAB®.