Posterior probability measure for image matching

Feng, Zuren; Feng, Zu-Ren; Lu, Na; Jiang, Ping

Abstract

Template matching is one of the principle techniques in visual tracking. Various similarity measures have been developed to find the target
in an acquired image by matching with a template. However, mismatching or misidentification may sporadically occur due to the influence of
the background pixels included in the designated target model. Taking into account the statistical features of a search region, a novel similarity
measure is proposed, which can decrease the interference of the background pixels enclosed in the model. It highlights the significant target
features and at the same time reduces the influence of the features shared by both the target and the background. It exhibits an excellent
monotonic property and a distinct peak-like distribution. This new measure is also demonstrated to have a direct interpretation of posterior
probability and is named as posterior probability measure (PPM). The proposed PPM can be obtained through a pixel-wise computation and
exhibits suitability for image matching. The pixel-wise computation also enables a fast measure update after a target region has changed, which
results in a new adaptive scaling method for tracking a target with a varying size. Experiments show that it provides a higher precision in
the localization and a discriminatory power superior to the existing similarity measures, such as Bhattacharyya coefficient, Kullback–Leibler
divergence, and normalized cross correlation. The effectiveness of the adaptive scaling method is demonstrated in experiments.

Citation

Feng, Z., Lu, N., & Jiang, P. (2008). Posterior probability measure for image matching. Pattern Recognition, 41(7), 2422-2433. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2007.12.013

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 16, 2007
• Online Publication Date: Jan 6, 2008
• Publication Date: 2008-07
• Deposit Date: Nov 13, 2014
• Journal: Pattern Recognition
• Print ISSN: 0031-3203
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 41
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 2422-2433
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2007.12.013
• Keywords: Similarity measure; Image matching; Visual tracking; Posterior probability
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/466943
• Publisher URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031320307005341?via%3Dihub
• Contract Date: Nov 13, 2014