Usual Structure-from-Motion (SfM) techniques require at least trifocal overlaps to calibrate cameras and reconstruct a scene. We consider here scenarios of reduced image sets with little overlap, possibly as low as two images at most seeing the same part of the scene. We propose a new method, based on line coplanarity hypotheses, for estimating the relative scale of two independent bifocal calibrations sharing a camera, without the need of any trifocal information or Manhattan-world assumption. We use it to compute SfM in a chain of up-to-scale relative motions. For accuracy, we however also make use of trifocal information for line and or point features, when present, relaxing usual trifocal constraints. For robustness to wrong assumptions and mismatches, we embed all constraints in a parameterless RANSAC-like approach. Experiments show that we can calibrate datasets that previously could not, and that this wider applicability does not come at the cost of inaccuracy.
@cite_18: We present an efficient structure from motion algorithm that can deal with large image collections in a fraction of time and effort of previous approaches while providing comparable quality of the scene and camera reconstruction. First, we employ fast image indexing using large image vocabularies to measure visual overlap of images without running actual image matching. Then, we select a small subset from the set of input images by computing its approximate minimal connected dominating set by a fast polynomial algorithm. Finally, we use task prioritization to avoid spending too much time in a few difficult matching problems instead of exploring other easier options. Thus we avoid wasting time on image pairs with low chance of success and avoid matching of highly redundant images of landmarks. We present results for several challenging sets of thousands of perspective as well as omnidirectional images.
@cite_10: 
@cite_37: We describe a hierarchical structure-from-motion pipeline.No information is needed beside images themselves.The pipeline proved successful in real-world tasks. This paper addresses the structure-and-motion problem, that requires to find camera motion and 3D structure from point matches. A new pipeline, dubbed Samantha, is presented, that departs from the prevailing sequential paradigm and embraces instead a hierarchical approach. This method has several advantages, like a provably lower computational complexity, which is necessary to achieve true scalability, and better error containment, leading to more stability and less drift. Moreover, a practical autocalibration procedure allows to process images without ancillary information. Experiments with real data assess the accuracy and the computational efficiency of the method.
Hierarchical SfM methods, that additionally merge partial models, also have similar constraints. In @cite_18 , the two models to merge are overlapping in the sense that they share one or several images, and pairs of 3D points projecting to the same 2D features in both models are used to relate the models, which implies tracks of length 3 or more. In @cite_37 , models are merged via feature matches between images separately associated to each model, requiring that the same four 3D points are reconstructed in both models, which implies in turn tracks of length 4 (connections between 2 tracks of length at least 2). Even with relaxed requirements where merging uses 4 points that are seen but not necessarily reconstructed in the other model @cite_10 , feature tracks of length 3 are required.