Phase-based feature matching under illumination variances

Abstract

The problem of matching feature points in multiple images is difficult to solve when their appearance changes due to illumination variance, either by lighting or object motion. In this paper we tackle this ill-posed problem by using the difference of local phase which is known to be stable to a certain extent even under illumination variances. In order to realize a precise matching, we basically compute the local phase by convolutions with Gabor filters which we design in multi scales. We then evaluate the stability of local phase against lighting changes. Through experiments using both CG and real images that are with illumination variance, we show the relevancy of our theoretical investigations. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.