Is there a library I can use to stitch together 16-bit images?

I am working on a C++ project where I need to stitch together multiple 16-bit images which overlap horizontally and vertically, and then save the stitched image. Is there a library which I can use to accomplish this task?

I have tried to use OpenCV to no success because the following exception was thrown:

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'cv::Exception'
  what():  OpenCV(4.0.1) /home/rar/opencv_build/opencv/modules/stitching/src/exposure_compensate.cpp:317: error: (-215:Assertion failed) _image.type() == CV_8UC3 in function 'apply'

Other people seem to have faced the same problem as I have [https://answers.opencv.org/question/34795/stitching-16bits-greyscale-images/]