Designing the lattice for log-polar images

Abstract

Log-polar images have been being used for pattern recognition and active vision tasks for some years. These images are obtained either from true retina-like sensors or from conventional cartesian images by software conversion. From the hardware perspective, the design of such log-polar retinae faces its own technological limitations. In the case of software remappers, however, their very flexibility has led to many researchers to use them with little or no justification of the choice of the particular log-polar layout. In this paper, a set of design criteria are proposed, and an approach to choose the parameters involved in the log-polar transform is described. This kind of design not only could be used in simulation software, but also could act as design guidelines for artificial hardware-built retinae. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.