Approximate steerability of Gabor filters for feature detection

Abstract

We discuss the connection between Gabor filters and steerable filters in pattern recognition. We derive optimal steering coefficients for Gabor filters and evaluate the accuracy of the approximative orientation steering numerically. Gabor filters can be well steerable, but the error of the approximation depends heavily on the parameters. We show how a rotation invariant feature similarity measure can be obtained using steerability. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.