A comparative evaluation of feature detectors on historic repeat photography

Abstract

This study reports on the quantitative evaluation of a set of state-ofthe- art feature detectors in the context of repeat photography. Unlike most related work, the proposed study assesses the performance of feature detectors when intra-pair variations are uncontrolled and due to a variety of factors (landscape change, weather conditions, different acquisition sensors). There is no systematic way to model the factors inducing image change. The proposed evaluation is performed in the context of image matching, i.e. in conjunction with a descriptor and matching strategy. Thus, beyond just comparing the performance of these detectors, we also examine the feasibility of feature-based matching on repeat photography. Our dataset consists of a set of repeat and historic images pairs that are representative for the database created by the Mountain Legacy Project www.mountainlegacy.ca. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.