title: Surface dependent representations for illumination insensitive image comparison.
abstract: We consider the problem of matching images to tell whether they come from the same scene viewed under different lighting conditions. We show that the surface characteristics determine the type of image comparison method that should be used. Previous work has shown the effectiveness of comparing the image gradient direction for surfaces with material properties that change rapidly in one direction. We show analytically that two other widely used methods, normalized correlation of small windows and comparison of multiscale oriented filters, essentially compute the same thing. Then, we show that for surfaces whose properties change more slowly, comparison of the output of whitening filters is most effective. This suggests that a combination of these strategies should be employed to compare general objects. We discuss indications that Gabor jets use such a mixed strategy effectively, and we propose a new mixed strategy. We validate our results on synthetic and real images.
authors.affiliation: Computer Science Department, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. rita@cs.haifa.ac.il
authors.forename: Margarita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Osadchy
authors.forename: David W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Jacobs
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lindenbaum
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods; D008029:Lighting; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013382:Subtraction Technique