Region-based object recognition using shape-from-Shading

Abstract

This paper investigates whether regions of uniform surface topography can be extracted from intensity images using shape-from- shading and subsequently used for the purposes of 3D object recognition. We draw on the constant shape-index maximal patch representation of Dorai and Jain. We commence by showing that the resulting shape-index regions are stable under different viewing angles. Based on this observa- tion we investigate the effiectiveness of various structural representations and region attributes for 3D object recognition. We show that region curvedness and a string ordering of the regions according to size pro- vides recognition accuracy of about 96%. By polling various recognition schemes, including a graph matching method, we show that a recognition rate of 98-99% is achievable.