Evaluation of Recent AI-based Point Matching Algorithms Applied on Aerial Images

Abstract. Accurate image matching is essential for the precise orientation of airborne imagery, yet modern feature matchers are rarely evaluated on real aerial data with great temporal, seasonal, and radiometric changes. For this study, we introduce the AerialRefMatch dataset, which comprises 51 challenging aerial images and corresponding true-ortho reference data. We benchmark classical and deep learning–based matching algorithms on AerialRefMatch, considering two scenarios: matching original images and matching approx-orthorectified images generated using GNSS/IMU orientations. For each method, image-based ground control points are derived and used for single-image pose estimation; accuracy is assessed via independent checkpoints. Results show that directly matching on original images is very difficult: fewer than 14% of images can be oriented with pixel-level accuracy. When approxorthorectification is used, performance improves substantially. JamMa, SIFT, and SuperPoint+LightGlue achieve pixel-level accuracy for up to 30% of images, with JamMa being most robust on difficult cases and SIFT-based variants being more precise on the easier ones. Deep detector-free models such as ELoFTR and RoMa are less accurate but more robust to the original images than other models. Overall, state-of-the-art deep learning-based matchers still struggle with large rotations, scale differences, and semantic differences, and strongly benefit from prior image orientation knowledge and lack sub-pixel precision. The AerialRefMatch dataset can be downloaded here: https://www.dlr.de/en/eoc/aerial-ref-match