Distinctive Image Features from Scale-Invariant Keypoints

This paper presents a method for extracting distinctive invariant features from images that can be used to perform reliable matching between different views of an object or scene. The features are invariant to image scale and rotation, and are shown to provide robust matching across a substantial range of affine distortion, change in 3D viewpoint, addition of noise, and change in illumination. The features are highly distinctive, in the sense that a single feature can be correctly matched with high probability against a large database of features from many images. This paper also describes an approach to using these features for object recognition. The recognition proceeds by matching individual features to a database of features from known objects using a fast nearest-neighbor algorithm, followed by a Hough transform to identify clusters belonging to a single object, and finally performing verification through least-squares solution for consistent pose parameters. This approach to recognition can robustly identify objects among clutter and occlusion while achieving near real-time performance.     

Shapeme histogram projection and matching for partial object recognition

Histograms of shape signature or prototypical shapes, called shapemes, have been used effectively in previous work for 2D/3D shape matching and recognition. We extend the idea of shapeme histogram to recognize partially observed query objects from a database of complete model objects. We propose representing each model object as a collection of shapeme histograms and match the query histogram to this representation in two steps: 1) compute a constrained projection of the query histogram onto the subspace spanned by all the shapeme histograms of the model and 2) compute a match measure between the query histogram and the projection. The first step is formulated as a constrained optimization problem that is solved by a sampling algorithm. The second step is formulated under a Bayesian framework, where an implicit feature selection process is conducted to improve the discrimination capability of shapeme histograms. Results of matching partially viewed range objects with a 243 model database demonstrate better performance than the original shapeme histogram matching algorithm and other approaches.     

A CAD Model Based System for Object Recognition

3D object recognition is a difficult and yet an important problem in computer vision. A 3D object recognition system has two major components, namely: an object modeller and a system that performs the matching of stored representations to those derived from the sensed image. The performance of systems wherein the construction of object models is done by training from one or more images of the objects, has not been very satisfactory. Although objects used in a robotic workcell or in assembly processes have been designed using a CAD system, the vision systems used for recognition of these objects are independent of the CAD database. This paper proposes a scheme for interfacing the CAD database of objects and the computer vision processes used for recognising these objects. CAD models of objects are processed to generate vision oriented features that appear in the different views of the object and the same features are extracted from images of the object to identify the object and its pose.     

3D object retrieval via range image queries in a bag-of-visual-words context

3D object retrieval based on range image queries that represent partial views of real 3D objects is presented. The complete 3D models of the database are described by a set of panoramic views, and a Bag-of-Visual-Words model is built using SIFT features extracted from them. To address the problem of partial matching, we suggest a histogram computation scheme, on the panoramic views, that represents local information by taking into account spatial context. Furthermore, a number of optimization techniques are applied throughout the process for enhancing the retrieval performance. Its superior performance is shown by evaluating it against state-of-the-art methods on standard datasets.     

Mobile multi-view object image search

High user interaction capability of mobile devices can help improve the accuracy of mobile visual search systems. At query time, it is possible to capture multiple views of an object from different viewing angles and at different scales with the mobile device camera to obtain richer information about the object compared to a single view and hence return more accurate results. Motivated by this, we propose a new multi-view visual query model on multi-view object image databases for mobile visual search. Multi-view images of objects acquired by the mobile clients are processed and local features are sent to a server, which combines the query image representations with early/late fusion methods and returns the query results. We performed a comprehensive analysis of early and late fusion approaches using various similarity functions, on an existing single view and a new multi-view object image database. The experimental results show that multi-view search provides significantly better retrieval accuracy compared to traditional single view search.     

Higher-Order Neural Networks Applied to 2D and 3D Object Recognition

A higher-order neural network (HONN) can be designed to be invariant to geometric transformations such as scale, translation, and in-plane rotation. Invariances are built directly into the architecture of a HONN and do not need to be learned. Thus, for 2D object recognition, the network needs to be trained on just one view of each object class, not numerous scaled, translated, and rotated views. Because the 2D object recognition task is a component of the 3D object recognition task, built-in 2D invariance also decreases the size of the training set required for 3D object recognition. We present results for 2D object recognition both in simulation and within a robotic vision experiment and for 3D object recognition in simulation. We also compare our method to other approaches and show that HONNs have distinct advantages for position, scale, and rotation-invariant object recognition.The major drawback of HONNs is that the size of the input field is limited due to the memory required for the large number of interconnections in a fully connected network. We present partial connectivity strategies and a coarse-coding technique for overcoming this limitation and increasing the input field to that required by practical object recognition problems.     

Scalable representation for 3D object recognition using feature sharing and view clustering

Scalability is an important issue in object recognition as it reduces database storage and recognition time. In this paper, we propose a new scalable 3D object representation and a learning method to recognize many everyday objects. The key proposal for scalable object representation is to combine the concept of feature sharing with multi-view clustering in part-based object representation, in particular a common-frame constellation model (CFCM). In this representation scheme, we also propose a fully automatic learning method: appearance-based automatic feature clustering and sequential construction of clustered CFCMs from labeled multi-views and multiple objects. We evaluated the scalability of the proposed method to COIL-100 DB and applied the learning scheme to 112 objects with 620 training views. Experimental results show the scalable learning results in almost constant recognition performance relative to the number of objects.     

基于尺度不变Harris特征的准稠密匹配算法

准稠密匹配是多视图三维重建的重要技术,其性能对重建结果至关重要。针对常用的Sift算法提取的种子点进行准稠密匹配正确率较低、重建效果不佳的问题,提出了一种基于尺度不变Harris角点特征的准稠密匹配算法。该算法首先在图像多尺度空间构造尺度不变Harris特征,并采用余弦距离测度对不同视图进行双向匹配;然后根据稀疏匹配获取种子点,采用最优最先匹配扩散策略进行准稠密扩散;最后采用局部非极大值抑制策略对匹配结果进行重采样。实验表明,本文算法提取的种子点既能够体现场景结构信息,又具有尺度不变特性,用于准稠密匹配能够提高匹配的效果和精度,是一种有效的用于三维重建的准稠密匹配算法。     

Evidence-based recognition of 3-D objects

An evidence-based recognition technique is defined that identifies 3-D objects by looking for their notable features. This technique makes use of an evidence rule base, which is a set of salient or evidence conditions with corresponding evidence weights for various objects in the database. A measure of similarity between the set of observed features and the set of evidence conditions for a given object in the database is used to determine the identity of an object in the scene or reject the object(s) in the scene as unknown. This procedure has polynomial time complexity and correctly identifies a variety of objects in both synthetic and real range images. A technique for automatically deriving the evidence rule base from training views of objects is shown to generate evidence conditions that successfully identify new views of those objects     

Indexing hierarchical structures using graph spectra

Hierarchical image structures are abundant in computer vision and have been used to encode part structure, scale spaces, and a variety of multiresolution features. In this paper, we describe a framework for indexing such representations that embeds the topological structure of a directed acyclic graph (DAG) into a low-dimensional vector space. Based on a novel spectral characterization of a DAG, this topological signature allows us to efficiently retrieve a promising set of candidates from a database of models using a simple nearest-neighbor search. We establish the insensitivity of the signature to minor perturbation of graph structure due to noise, occlusion, or node split/merge. To accommodate large-scale occlusion, the DAG rooted at each nonleaf node of the query "votes" for model objects that share that "part," effectively accumulating local evidence in a model DAG's topological subspaces. We demonstrate the approach with a series of indexing experiments in the domain of view-based 3D object recognition using shock graphs.     

Real-time monocular object SLAM

We present a real-time object-based SLAM system that leverages the largest object database to date. Our approach comprises two main components: (1) a monocular SLAM algorithm that exploits object rigidity constraints to improve the map and find its real scale, and (2) a novel object recognition algorithm based on bags of binary words, which provides live detections with a database of 500 3D objects. The two components work together and benefit each other: the SLAM algorithm accumulates information from the observations of the objects, anchors object features to especial map landmarks and sets constrains on the optimization. At the same time, objects partially or fully located within the map are used as a prior to guide the recognition algorithm, achieving higher recall. We evaluate our proposal on five real environments showing improvements on the accuracy of the map and efficiency with respect to other state-of-the-art techniques.     

Three-dimensional object representation and invariant recognitionusing continuous distance transform neural networks

3D object recognition under partial object viewing is a difficult pattern recognition task. In this paper, we introduce a neural-network solution that is robust to partial viewing of objects and noise corruption. This method directly utilizes the acquired 3D data and requires no feature extraction. The object is first parametrically represented by a continuous distance transform neural network (CDTNN) trained by the surface points of the exemplar object. The CDTNN maps any 3D coordinate into a value that corresponds to the distance between the point and the nearest surface point of the object. Therefore, a mismatch between the exemplar object and an unknown object can be easily computed. When encountered with deformed objects, this mismatch information can be backpropagated through the CDTNN to iteratively determine the deformation in terms of affine transform. Application to 3D heart contour delineation and invariant recognition of 3D rigid-body objects is presented.     

Shape-based indexing scheme for camera view invariant 3-D object retrieval

Camera view invariant 3-D object retrieval is an important issue in many traditional and emerging applications such as security, surveillance, computer-aided design (CAD), virtual reality, and place recognition. One straightforward method for camera view invariant 3-D object retrieval is to consider all the possible camera views of 3-D objects. However, capturing and maintaining such views require an enormous amount of time and labor. In addition, all camera views should be indexed for reasonable retrieval performance, which requires extra storage space and maintenance overhead. In the case of shape-based 3-D object retrieval, such overhead could be relieved by considering the symmetric shape feature of most objects. In this paper, we propose a new shape-based indexing and matching scheme of real or rendered 3-D objects for camera view invariant object retrieval. In particular, in order to remove redundant camera views to be indexed, we propose a camera view skimming scheme, which includes: i) mirror shape pairing and ii) camera view pruning according to the symmetrical patterns of object shapes. Since our camera view skimming scheme considerably reduces the number of camera views to be indexed, it could relieve the storage requirement and improve the matching speed without sacrificing retrieval accuracy. Through various experiments, we show that our proposed scheme can achieve excellent performance.     

基于SIFT算法的目标特征检测与提取技术研究

验证了一种能够在不同图像之间进行同一个物体相匹配的方法,具有很强的可靠性,称之为SIFT算法(尺度不变特征变换).SIFT算法能够处理图像间发生的尺度变换、旋转、很大范围内的仿射形变、视角变换、噪声以及光照变换.它的功能十分强大,甚至可以仅仅根据一个简单的物体特征,在一个大型数据库中的许多高品质图像中进行相应目标的寻找...