Rotation invariant feature matching-based on Gaussian filtered log polar transform and phase correlation

Abstract

Rotation invariance is an important property for any feature matching method and it has been implemented in different ways for different methods. The Log Polar Transform has primarily been used for image registration where it is applied after phase correlation, which in its turn is applied on the whole images or in the case of template matching, applied on major parts of them followed by an exhaustive search. We investigate how this transform can be used on local neighborhoods of features and how phase correlation as well as normalized cross correlation can be applied on the result. Thus, the order is reversed and we argue why it is important to do so. We demonstrate a common problem with the log polar transform and that many implementations of it are not suitable for local feature detectors. We propose an implementation of it based on Gaussian filtering. We also show that phase correlation generally will perform better than normalized cross correlation. Both handles illumination differences well, but changes in scale is handled better by the phase correlation approach.