A Descriptor-Based Advanced Feature Detector for Improved Visual Tracking

Abstract

Despite years of work, a robust, widely applicable generic “symmetry detector” that can paral-lel other kinds of computer vision/image processing tools for the more basic structural charac-teristics, such as a “edge” or “corner” detector, remains a computational challenge. A new symmetry feature detector with a descriptor is proposed in this paper, namely the Simple Robust Features (SRF) algorithm. A performance comparison is made among SRF with SRF, Speeded-up Robust Features (SURF) with SURF, Maximally Stable Extremal Regions (MSER) with SURF, Harris with Fast Retina Keypoint (FREAK), Minimum Eigenvalue with FREAK, Features from Accelerated Segment Test (FAST) with FREAK, and Binary Robust Invariant Scalable Keypoints (BRISK) with FREAK. A visual tracking dataset is used in this performance evaluation in terms of accuracy and computational cost. The results have shown that combining the SRF detector with the SRF descriptor is preferable, as it has on average the highest accuracy. Additionally, the computational cost of SRF with SRF is much lower than the others.