Harris Corner Detector Scale Invariant Feature Transform SIFT

Harris Corner Detector & Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT)

Harris Corner Detector

Harris Detector: Intuition “flat” region: no change in all directions “edge”: no change along the edge direction “corner”: significant change in all directions

Moravec Corner Detector • Shift in any direction would result in a significant change at a corner. Algorithm: • Shift in horizontal, vertical, and diagonal directions by one pixel. • Calculate the absolute value of the MSE for each shift. • Take the minimum as the cornerness response.

Harris Detector: Mathematics Change of intensity for the shift [u, v]: Window function Shifted intensity Window function w(x, y) = Intensity or 1 in window, 0 outside Gaussian

Harris Detector: Mathematics Apply Taylor series expansion:

Harris Detector: Mathematics For small shifts [u, v] we have the following approximation: where M is a 2 2 matrix computed from image derivatives:

Harris Detector: Mathematics Intensity change in shifting window: eigenvalue analysis 1, 2 – eigenvalues of M Ellipse E(u, v) = const direction of the fastest change direction of the slowest change ( max)-1/2 ( min)-1/2

Harris Detector: Mathematics Classification of image points using eigenvalues of M: 2 “Edge” 2 >> 1 “Corner” 1 and 2 are large, 1 ~ 2; E increases in all directions 1 and 2 are small; E is almost constant in all directions “Flat” region “Edge” 1 >> 2 1

Harris corner detector Measure of corner response: (k – empirical constant, k = 0. 04 -0. 06) No need to compute eigenvalues explicitly!

Eliminate small responses.

Find local maxima of the remaining.

Harris Detector: Scale Rmin= 0 Rmin= 1500

Summary of the Harris detector

Harris Detector: Some Properties • Rotation invariance Ellipse rotates but its shape (i. e. eigenvalues) remains the same Corner response R is invariant to image rotation

Harris Detector: Some Properties • Partial invariance to affine intensity change ü Only derivatives are used => invariance to intensity shift I I + b ü Intensity scale: I a I R R threshold x (image coordinate)

Harris Detector: Some Properties • But: non-invariant to image scale! All points will be classified as edges Corner !

Harris Detector: Some Properties • Quality of Harris detector for different scale changes Repeatability rate: # correspondences # possible correspondences C. Schmid et. al. “Evaluation of Interest Point Detectors”. IJCV 2000

Scale Invariant Detection • Consider regions (e. g. circles) of different sizes around a point • Regions of corresponding sizes will look the same in both images

Scale Invariant Detection • The problem: how do we choose corresponding circles independently in each image?

Scale Invariant Detection • Solution: – Design a function on the region (circle), which is “scale invariant” (the same for corresponding regions, even if they are at different scales) Example: average intensity. For corresponding regions (even of different sizes) it will be the same. – For a point in one image, we can consider it as a function of region size (circle radius) f Image 1 f Image 2 scale = 1/2 region size

Scale Invariant Detection • Common approach: Take a local maximum of this function Observation: region size, for which the maximum is achieved, should be invariant to image scale. Image 1 f f Image 2 scale = 1/2 s 1 region size s 2 region size

Characteristic Scale Ratio of scales corresponds to a scale factor between two images

Scale Invariant Detection • A “good” function for scale detection: has one stable sharp peak f f f bad region size Good ! bad region size • For usual images: a good function would be a one which responds to contrast (sharp local intensity change)

Scale Invariant Detection • Functions for determining scale Kernels: (Laplacian) (Difference of Gaussians) where Gaussian L or Do. G kernel is a matching filter. It finds blob-like structure. It turns out to be also successful in getting characteristic scale of other structures, such as corner regions.

Difference-of-Gaussians

Scale-Space Extrema • Choose all extrema within 3 x 3 x 3 neighborhood. X is selected if it is larger or smaller than all 26 neighbors

Scale Invariant Detectors Find local maximum of: – Harris corner detector in space (image coordinates) – Laplacian in scale • SIFT (Lowe)2 Find local maximum of: – Difference of Gaussians in space and scale 1 K. Mikolajczyk, Laplacian scale y Harris x Do. G x scale Do. G • Harris-Laplacian 1 y C. Schmid. “Indexing Based on Scale Invariant Interest Points”. ICCV 200 2 D. Lowe. “Distinctive Image Features from Scale-Invariant Keypoints”. Accepted to IJCV

Harris-Laplace Detector

Scale Invariant Detectors • Experimental evaluation of detectors w. r. t. scale change Repeatability rate: # correspondences # possible correspondences K. Mikolajczyk, C. Schmid. “Indexing Based on Scale Invariant Interest Points”. ICCV 2001

Affine Invariant Detection • Above we considered: Similarity transform (rotation + uniform scale) • Now we go on to: Affine transform (rotation + non-uniform scale)

Affine Invariant Detection • Take a local intensity extremum as initial point • Go along every ray starting from this point and stop when extremum of function f is reached f points along the ray T. Tuytelaars, L. V. Gool. “Wide Baseline Stereo Matching Based on Local, Affinely Invariant Regions”. BMVC 2000.

Affine Invariant Detection • Such extrema occur at positions where intensity suddenly changes compared to the intensity changes up to that point. • In theory, leaving out the denominator would still give invariant positions. In practice, the local extrema would be shallow, and might result in inaccurate positions. T. Tuytelaars, L. V. Gool. “Wide Baseline Stereo Matching Based on Local, Affinely Invariant Regions”. BMVC 2000.

Affine Invariant Detection • The regions found may not exactly correspond, so we approximate them with ellipses • Find the ellipse that best fits the region

Affine Invariant Detection • Covariance matrix of region points defines an ellipse: ( p = [x, y]T is relative to the center of mass) Ellipses, computed for corresponding regions, also correspond!

Affine Invariant Detection • Algorithm summary (detection of affine invariant region): – Start from a local intensity extremum point – Go in every direction until the point of extremum of some function f – Curve connecting the points is the region boundary – Compute the covariance matrix – Replace the region with ellipse T. Tuytelaars, L. V. Gool. “Wide Baseline Stereo Matching Based on Local, Affinely Invariant Regions”. BMVC 2000.

Affine Invariant Detection • Maximally Stable Extremal Regions – Threshold image intensities: I > I 0 – Extract connected components (“Extremal Regions”) – Find “Maximally Stable” regions – Approximate a region with an ellipse J. Matas et. al. “Distinguished Regions for Wide-baseline Stereo”. Research Report of

Affine Invariant Detection : Summary • Under affine transformation, we do not know in advance shapes of the corresponding regions • Ellipse given by geometric covariance matrix of a region robustly approximates this region • For corresponding regions ellipses also correspond Methods: 1. Search for extremum along rays [Tuytelaars, Van Gool]: 2. Maximally Stable Extremal Regions [Matas et. al. ]

Point Descriptors • We know how to detect points • Next question: How to match them? ? Point descriptor should be: 1. Invariant 2. Distinctive

Descriptors Invariant to Rotation • Convert from Cartesian to Polar coordinates • Rotation becomes translation in polar coordinates • Take Fourier Transform – Magnitude of the Fourier transform is invariant to translation.

Descriptors Invariant to Rotation • Find local orientation Dominant direction of gradient • Compute image regions relative to this orientation

Descriptors Invariant to Scale • Use the characteristic scale determined by detector to compute descriptor in a normalized frame

Affine Invariant Descriptors • Find affine normalized frame A A 1 A 2 rotation • Compute rotational invariant descriptor in this normalized frame J. Matas et. al. “Rotational Invariants for Wide-baseline Stereo”. Research Report of

Affine covariant regions

SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform)

SIFT – Scale Invariant Feature Transform 1 • Empirically found 2 to show very good performance, invariant to image rotation, scale, intensity change, and to moderate affine transformations Scale = 2. 5 Rotation = 450 1 D. Lowe. “Distinctive Image Features from Scale-Invariant Keypoints”. Accepted to IJCV 2 K. Mikolajczyk, C. Schmid. “A Performance Evaluation of Local Descriptors”. CVPR 2003

SIFT – Scale Invariant Feature Transform • Descriptor overview: – Determine scale (by maximizing Do. G in scale and in space), local orientation as the dominant gradient direction. Use this scale and orientation to make all further computations invariant to scale and rotation. – Compute gradient orientation histograms of several small windows (to produce 128 values for each point) D. Lowe. “Distinctive Image Features from Scale-Invariant Keypoints”. Accepted to IJCV 2

Scale-space extrema detection • Need to find “characteristic scale” for each feature point.

Difference-of-Gaussians

Scale-Space Extrema • Choose all extrema within 3 x 3 x 3 neighborhood. X is selected if it is larger or smaller than all 26 neighbors

Keypoint Localization & Filtering • Now we have much less points than pixels. • However, still lots of points (~1000 s)… – With only pixel-accuracy at best – And this includes many bad points Brown & Lowe 2002

Keypoint Filtering - Low Contrast • Reject points with bad contrast: – Do. G smaller than 0. 03 (image values in [0, 1]) • Reject edges – Similar to the Harris detector; look at the autocorrelation matrix

Maxima in D

Remove low contrast and edges

Orientation assignment • By assigning a consistent orientation, the keypoint descriptor can be orientation invariant. • Let, for a keypoint, L is the image with the closest scale. – Compute gradient magnitude and orientation using finite differences:

Orientation assignment

Orientation assignment

Orientation assignment

Orientation assignment

Orientation Assignment • Any peak within 80% of the highest peak is used to create a keypoint with that orientation • ~15% assigned multiplied orientations, but contribute significantly to the stability

SIFT descriptor

SIFT Descriptor • Each point so far has x, y, σ, m, θ • Now we need a descriptor for the region – Could sample intensities around point, but… • Sensitive to lighting changes • Sensitive to slight errors in x, y, θ Edelman et al. 1997

SIFT Descriptor • 16 x 16 Gradient window is taken. Partitioned into 4 x 4 subwindows. • Histogram of 4 x 4 samples in 8 directions • Gaussian weighting around center( is 0. 5 times that of the scale of a keypoint) • 4 x 4 x 8 = 128 dimensional feature vector Image from: Jonas Hurrelmann

Performance • Very robust – 80% Repeatability at: • 10% image noise • 45° viewing angle • 1 k-100 k keypoints in database • Best descriptor in [Mikolajczyk & Schmid 2005]’s extensive survey

Recognition under occlusion