An evaluation of recent local image descriptors for real-world applications of image matching

This paper discusses and compares the best and most recent local descriptors, evaluating them on increasingly complex image matching tasks, encompassing planar and non-planar scenarios under severe viewpoint changes. This evaluation, aimed at assessing descriptor suitability for real-world applications, leverages the concept of approximated overlap error as a means to naturally extend to non-planar scenes the standard metric used for planar scenes. According to the evaluation results, most descriptors exhibit a gradual performance degradation in the transition from planar to non-planar scenes. The best descriptors are those capable of capturing well not only the local image context, but also the global scene structure. Data-driven approaches are shown to have reached the matching robustness and accuracy of the best hand-crafted descriptor

Rethinking the sGLOH descriptor

sGLOH (shifting GLOH) is a histogram-based keypoint descriptor that can be associated to multiple quantized rotations of the keypoint patch without any recomputation. This property can be exploited to define the best distance between two descriptor vectors, thus avoiding computing the dominant orientation. In addition, sGLOH can reject incongruous correspondences by adding a global constraint on the rotations either as an a priori knowledge or based on the data. This paper thoroughly reconsiders sGLOH and improves it in terms of robustness, speed and descriptor dimension. The revised sGLOH embeds more quantized rotations, thus yielding more correct matches. A novel fast matching scheme is also designed, which significantly reduces both computation time and memory usage. In addition, a new binarization technique based on comparisons inside each descriptor histogram is defined, yielding a more compact, faster, yet robust alternative. Results on an exhaustive comparative experimental evaluation show that the revised sGLOH descriptor incorporating the above ideas and combining them according to task requirements, improves in most cases the state of the art in both image matching and object recognition

HPatches: A benchmark and evaluation of handcrafted and learned local descriptors

In this paper, we propose a novel benchmark for evaluating local image descriptors. We demonstrate that the existing datasets and evaluation protocols do not specify unambiguously all aspects of evaluation, leading to ambiguities and inconsistencies in results reported in the literature. Furthermore, these datasets are nearly saturated due to the recent improvements in local descriptors obtained by learning them from large annotated datasets. Therefore, we introduce a new large dataset suitable for training and testing modern descriptors, together with strictly defined evaluation protocols in several tasks such as matching, retrieval and classification. This allows for more realistic, and thus more reliable comparisons in different application scenarios. We evaluate the performance of several state-of-the-art descriptors and analyse their properties. We show that a simple normalisation of traditional hand-crafted descriptors can boost their performance to the level of deep learning based descriptors within a realistic benchmarks evaluation

Is there anything new to say about SIFT matching?

SIFT is a classical hand-crafted, histogram-based descriptor that has deeply influenced research on image matching for more than a decade. In this paper, a critical review of the aspects that affect SIFT matching performance is carried out, and novel descriptor design strategies are introduced and individually evaluated. These encompass quantization, binarization and hierarchical cascade filtering as means to reduce data storage and increase matching efficiency, with no significant loss of accuracy. An original contextual matching strategy based on a symmetrical variant of the usual nearest-neighbor ratio is discussed as well, that can increase the discriminative power of any descriptor. The paper then undertakes a comprehensive experimental evaluation of state-of-the-art hand-crafted and data-driven descriptors, also including the most recent deep descriptors. Comparisons are carried out according to several performance parameters, among which accuracy and space-time efficiency. Results are provided for both planar and non-planar scenes, the latter being evaluated with a new benchmark based on the concept of approximated patch overlap. Experimental evidence shows that, despite their age, SIFT and other hand-crafted descriptors, once enhanced through the proposed strategies, are ready to meet the future image matching challenges. We also believe that the lessons learned from this work will inspire the design of better hand-crafted and data-driven descriptors

Large scale evaluation of local image feature detectors on homography datasets

We present a large scale benchmark for the evaluation of local feature detectors. Our key innovation is the introduction of a new evaluation protocol which extends and improves the standard detection repeatability measure. The new protocol is better for assessment on a large number of images and reduces the dependency of the results on unwanted distractors such as the number of detected features and the feature magnification factor. Additionally, our protocol provides a comprehensive assessment of the expected performance of detectors under several practical scenarios. Using images from the recently-introduced HPatches dataset, we evaluate a range of state-of-the-art local feature detectors on two main tasks: viewpoint and illumination invariant detection. Contrary to previous detector evaluations, our study contains an order of magnitude more image sequences, resulting in a quantitative evaluation significantly more robust to over-fitting. We also show that traditional detectors are still very competitive when compared to recent deep-learning alternatives.Comment: Accepted to BMVC 201

Robust Photogeometric Localization over Time for Map-Centric Loop Closure

Map-centric SLAM is emerging as an alternative of conventional graph-based SLAM for its accuracy and efficiency in long-term mapping problems. However, in map-centric SLAM, the process of loop closure differs from that of conventional SLAM and the result of incorrect loop closure is more destructive and is not reversible. In this paper, we present a tightly coupled photogeometric metric localization for the loop closure problem in map-centric SLAM. In particular, our method combines complementary constraints from LiDAR and camera sensors, and validates loop closure candidates with sequential observations. The proposed method provides a visual evidence-based outlier rejection where failures caused by either place recognition or localization outliers can be effectively removed. We demonstrate the proposed method is not only more accurate than the conventional global ICP methods but is also robust to incorrect initial pose guesses.Comment: To Appear in IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS, ACCEPTED JANUARY 201