METHOD AND DEVICE FOR PROCESSING AND FOR SEARCHING FOR AN OBJECT BY SIGNALS CORRESPONDING TO IMAGES

• US 20080063310A1
• Filed: 10/30/2007
• Published: 03/13/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 07/05/1999
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Rakuten Group, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Miroslaw Bober
• Inventors: Bober, Miroslaw
• Granted Patent: US 7,532,775 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/305
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5854 using shape and object relationship
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/46 Descriptors for shape, contour or point-related descriptors, e.g. scale invariant feature transform [SIFT] or bags of words [BoW]; Salient regional features colour feature extraction G06V10/56
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/752 Contour matching

Abstract

A method of representing an object appearing in a still or video image, by processing signals corresponding to the image, comprises deriving the peak values in CSS space for the object outline and applying a non-linear transformation to said peak values to arrive at a representation of the outline.

Claims

1. A method of representing an object appearing in an image or a sequence of images, by processing signals corresponding to the image, the method comprising deriving a plurality of co-ordinate values for peaks of the outline of the object in curvature scale space on the basis of the signals, wherein the method of deriving a curvature scale space representation involves using a binomial filter.

2. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said binomial filter has coefficients (¼

, ½

, ¼

).

3. A method as claimed in claim 1 further comprising a scaling or non-linear transformation to said co-ordinate values to arrive at a representation of the outline.

4. A method of searching for an object in an image or sequence of images by processing signals corresponding to images, the method comprising inputting a query in the form of a two-dimensional outline, deriving a descriptor of said outline using a method as claimed in claim 1, obtaining a descriptor of objects in stored images derived using a method as claimed in claim 1 and comparing said query descriptor with each descriptor for stored object, and selecting and displaying at least one result corresponding to an image containing an object for which the comparison indicates a degree of similarity between the query and said object.

5. An apparatus adapted to implement a method as claimed in claim 1 or claim 4.

6. A computer system programmed to operate according to a method as claimed in claims 1 or claim 4.

7. A computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable process steps for implementing a method as claimed in claim 1 or claim 4.