I had some success with feature-based methods for image registration, but these methods are sometimes unsuitable (e.g. images containing repetitive patterns, very low contrast, low texture, no edges/corners).
I am therefore looking for a direct (pixel-based) global alignment alternative.
So far I looked on algorithms like Horn-Schunck, Lucas-Kanade, ECC but all the examples show only images with very small displacement (few pixels at most).
Is there any direct (pixel-based) method for registering images with a displacement of 200 pixels or more (in any direction)?
So far I am using simple template matching with exhaustive search over possible image shifts and Normalised Cross-Correlation error metric, which works, but it is extremely slow (basically $O(n^4)$) and does not allow for rotation.
Are there any faster methods allowing large image shifts/rotations?