基于几何约束投票的图像特征匹配

为了改进单纯依靠相似度的图像特征匹配效果,提出了一种特征匹配方法,采用投票的方法在特征匹配的过程中引入几何约束。首先根据特征的描述向量进行初步的快速匹配,得到候选特征对以后通过投票的手段在特征之间相似度矩阵中引入一种鲁棒的几何约束,并通过自适应阈值过滤的方法获得图像特征匹配。在实验中验证了该方法对图像特征匹配正确与否具有较强的区分能力,在与已有技术接近的计算时间内得到了更高的匹配准确度。基于几何约束投票的图像特征匹配比单纯依靠相似度具有更好的匹配效果。     

基于奇异值分解的宽基线图像匹配算法

图像匹配是计算机视觉中许多应用研究的基础.窄基线匹配技术虽然较为成熟,但是解决能力有限,不能处理较大的尺度、旋转、亮度以及仿射变化引起的宽基线图像序列的匹配.针对宽基线图像序列匹配的特点,在分析传统SVD匹配算法不足的基础上,引入具有尺度和旋转不变性的特征,改进邻近矩阵的度量方式,设计了一种新的基于奇异值分解的宽基线自动匹配算法.通过对比实验表明,该算法性能优于基于SIFT距离的匹配器和原SVD匹配算法,对于存在较大的尺度、旋转、亮度等宽基线变化的图像序列,能够自动获得更多的正确匹配点对和较高的准确性,鲁棒性强,甚至对视角和仿射变换也有一定的适应性.     

A correlation-relaxation-labeling framework for computing opticalflow-template matching from a new perspective

Optical flow estimation is discussed based on a model for time-varying images more general than that implied by Horn and Schunk (1981). The emphasis is on applications where low contrast imagery, nonrigid or evolving object patterns movement, as well as large interframe displacements are encountered. Template matching is identified as having advantages over point correspondence and the gradient-based approach in dealing with such applications. The two fundamental uncertainties in feature matching, whether template matching or feature point correspondences, are discussed. Correlation template matching procedures are established based on likelihood measurement. A method for determining optical flow is developed by combining template matching and relaxation labeling. A number of candidate displacements for each template and their respective likelihood measures are determined. Then, relaxation labeling is employed to iteratively update each candidate's likelihood by requiring smoothness within a motion field. Real cloud images from satellites are used to test the method     

Feature matching based on unsupervised manifold alignment

Feature-based methods for image registration frequently encounter the correspondence problem. In this paper, we formulate feature-based image registration as a manifold alignment problem, and present a novel matching method for finding the correspondences among different images containing the same object. Different from the semi-supervised manifold alignment, our methods map the data sets to the underlying common manifold without using correspondence information. An iterative multiplicative updating algorithm is proposed to optimize the objective, and its convergence is guaranteed theoretically. The proposed approach has been tested for matching accuracy, and robustness to outliers. Its performance on synthetic and real images is compared with the state-of-the-art reference algorithms.     

View matching with blob features

This article introduces a new region based feature for object recognition and image matching. In contrast to many other region based features, this one makes use of colour in the feature extraction stage. We perform experiments on the repeatability rate of the features across scale and inclination angle changes, and show that avoiding to merge regions connected by only a few pixels improves the repeatability. We introduce two voting schemes that allow us to find correspondences automatically, and compare them with respect to the number of valid correspondences they give, and their inlier ratios. We also demonstrate how the matching procedure can be applied to colour correction.     

Replicator Dynamics in the Iterative Process for Accurate Range Image Matching

Iterative algorithms are often used for range image matching. In this paper, we treat the iterative process of range image matching as a live biological system: evolving from one generation to another. Whilst different generations of the population are regarded as range images captured at different viewpoints, the iterative process is simulated using time. The well-known replicator equations in theoretical biology are then adapted to estimate the probabilities of possible correspondences established using the traditional closest point criterion. To reduce the effect of image resolutions on the final results for efficient and robust overlapping range image matching, the relative fitness difference (rather than the absolute fitness difference) is employed in the replicator equations in order to model the probability change of possible correspondences being real over successive iterations. The fitness of a possible correspondence is defined as the negative of a power of its squared Euclidean distance. While the replicator dynamics penalize those individuals with low fitness, they are further penalised with a parameter, since distant points are often unlikely to represent their real replicators. While the replicator equations assume that all individuals are equally likely to meet each other and thus treat them equally, we penalise those individuals competing for the same points as their possible replicators. The estimated probabilities of possible correspondences being real are finally embedded into the powerful deterministic annealing scheme for global optimization, resulting in the camera motion parameters being estimated in the weighted least squares sense. A comparative study based on real range images with partial overlap has shown that the proposed algorithm is promising for automatic matching of overlapping range images.     

基于最大权团的曲面粗匹配算法

提出一种将曲面匹配问题转化为图论中的最大权团搜索问题、将最优的点对应关系用最大权团表示的曲面粗匹配算法,该算法分为点匹配、点对应图构造和最大权团生成等3个阶段.点匹配使用高曲率点和均匀采样点作为候选点,通过自旋图进行匹配计算,构造初始点对应集合;点对应图构造使用距离约束、法矢约束和唯一性约束构造图的边,并使用自旋图相关系数为顶点赋权值;最大权团生成使用基于分支限界的团搜索算法,从对应点图中提取出代表最优对应的最大权团.实验结果表明,文中算法稳定、有效、可扩展,能够进行部分曲面匹配,并且适用于欠特征曲面.     

Electors Voting for Fast Automatic Shape Correspondence

This paper challenges the difficult problem of automatic semantic correspondence between two given shapes which are semantically similar but possibly geometrically very different (e.g., a dog and an elephant). We argue that the challenging part is the establishment of a sparse correspondence and show that it can be efficiently solved by considering the underlying skeletons augmented with intrinsic surface information. To avoid potentially costly direct search for the best combinatorial match between two sets of skeletal feature nodes, we introduce a statistical correspondence algorithm based on a novel voting scheme, which we call electors voting. The electors are a rather large set of correspondences which then vote to synthesize the final correspondence. The electors are selected via a combinatorial search with pruning tests designed to quickly filter out a vast majority of bad correspondence. This voting scheme is both efficient and insensitive to parameter and threshold settings. The effectiveness of the method is validated by precision‐recall statistics with respect to manually defined ground truth. We show that high quality correspondences can be instantaneously established for a wide variety of model pairs, which may have different poses, surface details, and only partial semantic correspondence.     

A segmentation-free word spotting method for historical printed documents

In this paper, a two-step segmentation-free word spotting method for historical printed documents is presented. The first step involves a minimum distance matching between a query keyword image and a document page image using keypoint correspondences. In the second step of the method, the matched keypoints on the document image serve as indicators for creating candidate image areas. The query keyword image is matched against the candidate image areas in order to properly estimate the bounding boxes of the detected word instances. The method is evaluated using two datasets of different languages and is compared against segmentation-free state-of-the-art methods. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms significantly the competitive approaches.     

A new graph matching method for point-set correspondence using the EM algorithm and Softassign

Finding correspondences between two point-sets is a common step in many vision applications (e.g., image matching or shape retrieval). We present a graph matching method to solve the point-set correspondence problem, which is posed as one of mixture modelling. Our mixture model encompasses a model of structural coherence and a model of affine-invariant geometrical errors. Instead of absolute positions, the geometrical positions are represented as relative positions of the points with respect to each other. We derive the Expectation–Maximization algorithm for our mixture model. In this way, the graph matching problem is approximated, in a principled way, as a succession of assignment problems which are solved using Softassign. Unlike other approaches, we use a true continuous underlying correspondence variable. We develop effective mechanisms to detect outliers. This is a useful technique for improving results in the presence of clutter. We evaluate the ability of our method to locate proper matches as well as to recognize object categories in a series of registration and recognition experiments. Our method compares favourably to other graph matching methods as well as to point-set registration methods and outlier rejectors.     

Hough Pyramid Matching: Speeded-Up Geometry Re-ranking for Large Scale Image Retrieval

Exploiting local feature shape has made geometry indexing possible, but at a high cost of index space, while a sequential spatial verification and re-ranking stage is still indispensable for large scale image retrieval. In this work we investigate an accelerated approach for the latter problem. We develop a simple spatial matching model inspired by Hough voting in the transformation space, where votes arise from single feature correspondences. Using a histogram pyramid, we effectively compute pair-wise affinities of correspondences without ever enumerating all pairs. Our Hough pyramid matching algorithm is linear in the number of correspondences and allows for multiple matching surfaces or non-rigid objects under one-to-one mapping. We achieve re-ranking one order of magnitude more images at the same query time with superior performance compared to state of the art methods, while requiring the same index space. We show that soft assignment is compatible with this matching scheme, preserving one-to-one mapping and further increasing performance.     

Fingerprint matching using ridges

Traditionally, fingerprint matching is minutia-based, which establishes the minutiae correspondences between two fingerprints. In this paper, a novel fingerprint matching algorithm is presented, which establishes both the ridge correspondences and the minutia correspondences between two fingerprints. First N initial substructure (including a minutia and adjacent ridges) pairs are found by a novel alignment method. Based on each of these substructure pairs, ridge matching is performed by incrementally matching ridges and minutiae, and then a matching score is computed. The maximum one of the N scores is used as the final matching score of two fingerprints. Preliminary results on FVC2002 databases show that ridge matching approach performs comparably with the minutia-based one.     

Object Recognition as Many-to-Many Feature Matching

Object recognition can be formulated as matching image features to model features. When recognition is exemplar-based, feature correspondence is one-to-one. However, segmentation errors, articulation, scale difference, and within-class deformation can yield image and model features which don’t match one-to-one but rather many-to-many. Adopting a graph-based representation of a set of features, we present a matching algorithm that establishes many-to-many correspondences between the nodes of two noisy, vertex-labeled weighted graphs. Our approach reduces the problem of many-to-many matching of weighted graphs to that of many-to-many matching of weighted point sets in a normed vector space. This is accomplished by embedding the initial weighted graphs into a normed vector space with low distortion using a novel embedding technique based on a spherical encoding of graph structure. Many-to-many vector correspondences established by the Earth Mover’s Distance framework are mapped back into many-to-many correspondences between graph nodes. Empirical evaluation of the algorithm on an extensive set of recognition trials, including a comparison with two competing graph matching approaches, demonstrates both the robustness and efficacy of the overall approach.     

Flexible and Robust Model Matching based on Association Graph for Form Image Understanding

A new method of image understanding for forms based on model matching is proposed in this paper as the basis of an OCR which can read a variety of forms. The outline of this method is described as follows. First, ruled lines are extracted from the input image of a form. After that, several lines are grouped as one to be recognised as data corresponding to a sub-form. These lines and sub-forms are both used for understanding the form, taking into account their feature attributes and the relationships between them. Each feature in the input image of a form is expected to correspond to a feature in one of the model forms, which are described as structured features. This correspondence is represented by a node in an association graph, where an arc represents compatible correspondences established on the basis of feature relationships. The best match is found as the largest maximal clique in the association graph. Experimental results show the method is robust and effective for document images of poor quality, and also for various styles of forms.     

Statistical Approaches to Feature-Based Object Recognition

This paper examines statistical approaches to model-based object recognition.Evidence is presented indicating that, in some domains, normal (Gaussian) distributions are more accurate than uniform distributions for modeling feature fluctuations. This motivates the development of new maximum-likelihood and MAP recognition formulations which are based on normal feature models. These formulations lead to an expression for the posterior probability of the pose and correspondences given an image.Several avenues are explored for specifying a recognition hypothesis. In the first approach, correspondences are included as a part of the hypotheses. Search for solutions may be ordered as a combinatorial search in correspondence space, or as a search over pose space, where the same criterion can equivalently be viewed as a robust variant of chamfer matching. In the second approach, correspondences are not viewed as being a part of the hypotheses. This leads to a criterion that is a smooth function of pose that is amenable to local search by continuous optimization methods. The criteria is also suitable for optimization via the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm, which alternates between pose refinement and re-estimation of correspondence probabilities until convergence is obtained.Recognition experiments are described using the criteria with features derived from video images and from synthetic range images.     

Correspondence consensus of two sets of correspondences through optimisation functions

We present a consensus method which, given the two correspondences between sets of elements generated by separate entities, enounces a final correspondence consensus considering the existence of outliers. Our method is based on an optimisation technique that minimises the cost of the correspondence while forcing (to the most) to be the mean correspondence of the two original correspondences. The method decides the mapping of the elements that the original correspondences disagree and returns the same element mapping when both correspondences agree. We first show the validity of the method through an experiment in ideal conditions based on palmprint identification, and subsequently present two practical experiments based on image retrieval.     

A multi-seed dynamic local graph matching model for tracking of densely packed cells across unregistered microscopy image sequences

The tracking of plant cells in large-scale microscopy image sequences is very challenging, because plant cells are densely packed in a specific honeycomb structure, and the microscopy images can be randomly translated, rotated and scaled in the imaging process. This paper proposes a multi-seed dynamic local graph matching method to track the plant cells across unregistered microscopy image sequences, by exploiting the geometric structure and topology of cells’ relative positions as contextual information. The proposed dynamic cell matching scheme always selects the most similar cell pair in the dynamically growing neighbor set of matched cells, so it tends to prevent the matching error accumulation during the cell correspondence growing process. Furthermore, the multi-seed-based majority voting scheme can automatically rectify the matching errors produced by one seed only. Last, the cells’ lineage tracklets are associated by using the cells’ spatial–temporal context to obtain long-term trajectories. Compared with the existing local graph matching method, the experimental results show that the proposed method improves the tracking accuracy rate by about 30% in the unregistered image sequences.     

Model-based stroke extraction and matching for handwritten Chinese character recognition

This paper proposes a model-based structural matching method for handwritten Chinese character recognition (HCCR). This method is able to obtain reliable stroke correspondence and enable structural interpretation. In the model base, the reference character of each category is described in an attributed relational graph (ARG). The input character is described with feature points and line segments. The strokes and inter-stroke relations of input character are not determined until being matched with a reference character. The structural matching is accomplished in two stages: candidate stroke extraction and consistent matching. All candidate input strokes to match the reference strokes are extracted by line following and then the consistent matching is achieved by heuristic search. Some structural post-processing operations are applied to improve the stroke correspondence. Recognition experiments were implemented on an image database collected in KAIST, and promising results have been achieved.