Recognizing 3D Object Using Photometric Invariant

In this paper we describe a new efficient algorithm for recognizing 3D objects by combining photometric and geometric invariants. Some photometric properties are derived, that are invariant to the changes of illumination and to relative object motion with respect to the camera and/or the lighting source in 3D space. We argue that conventional color constancy algorithms can not be used in the recognition of 3D objects. Further we show recognition does not require a full constancy of colors, rather, it only needs something that remains unchanged under the varying light conditions sand poses of the objects. Combining the derived color invariants and the spatial constraints on the object surfaces, we identify corresponding positions in the model and the data space coordinates, using centroid invariance of corresponding groups of feature positions. Tests are given to show the stability and efficiency of our approach to 3D object recognition

Saliency for Image Description and Retrieval

We live in a world where we are surrounded by ever increasing numbers of images. More often than not, these images have very little metadata by which they can be indexed and searched. In order to avoid information overload, techniques need to be developed to enable these image collections to be searched by their content. Much of the previous work on image retrieval has used global features such as colour and texture to describe the content of the image. However, these global features are insufficient to accurately describe the image content when different parts of the image have different characteristics. This thesis initially discusses how this problem can be circumvented by using salient interest regions to select the areas of the image that are most interesting and generate local descriptors to describe the image characteristics in that region. The thesis discusses a number of different saliency detectors that are suitable for robust retrieval purposes and performs a comparison between a number of these region detectors. The thesis then discusses how salient regions can be used for image retrieval using a number of techniques, but most importantly, two techniques inspired from the field of textual information retrieval. Using these robust retrieval techniques, a new paradigm in image retrieval is discussed, whereby the retrieval takes place on a mobile device using a query image captured by a built-in camera. This paradigm is demonstrated in the context of an art gallery, in which the device can be used to find more information about particular images. The final chapter of the thesis discusses some approaches to bridging the semantic gap in image retrieval. The chapter explores ways in which un-annotated image collections can be searched by keyword. Two techniques are discussed; the first explicitly attempts to automatically annotate the un-annotated images so that the automatically applied annotations can be used for searching. The second approach does not try to explicitly annotate images, but rather, through the use of linear algebra, it attempts to create a semantic space in which images and keywords are positioned such that images are close to the keywords that represent them within the space