# Mirror Image

## Recursive Interferometry – Phase Congruency?

Thanks to Igor Carron I’ve watched a great videolecture by Stephane Mallat High dimensional classification by recursive interferometry. Actually I watched it twice, and I think I understand most of it now))). And it was not about compressed sensing, not even about manifold learning much . It was mostly about a new application of wavelets . How to use wavelets to produce low dimensional data (image descriptor if we are talking about computer vision) from high dimensional data(that is image). The idea is to transcend linear representation and use nonlinear operation – absolute value of wavelet. Absolute value – square root of wavelet square carry information of frequencies differences. It’s invert Fourier transform have new harmonics – differences of frequencies of original function. That interference of harmonics of original image. Now it was reminding me something. Yep – phase congruency (pdf). Phase congruency also use absolute value of wavelet(windowed Fourier). It seems to me it has perfect explanation. Interference pattern defined by how in-phase both wave are. That is it’s like a phase congruency taken into each point. Phase congruency edge-detector is in fact finding maximum of somehow normalized interference pattern. In that sense this Mallat’s method producing invariants from high-dimensional data is analogous to producing sketch from photo.
Ok, enough rambling for now.

30, September, 2010

## Features matching and geometric consistency.

Here I want to talk about matching in image registration. We are doing registration in 3D or 2D, and using feature points for that. Next stage after extraction of feature points from the image is finding corresponding points in two(or more) images. Usually it’s done with descriptors, like SIFT, SURF, DAISY etc. Sometimes randomized trees are used for it. Whatever methods is used it usually has around .5% of false positives. False positives create outliers in registration algorithm. That is not a big problem in planar trackers or model/marker trackers. It could be a problem for Structure From Motion though. If CPU power is not limited the problem is not very serious. Heavy-duty algorithms like full-sequence bundle adjustment and RANSAC cope with outliers pretty well. However even for high-end mobile phones such algorithms are problematic. Some tricks can help – Georg Klein put full-sequence bundle adjustment into separate thread on PTAM tracker to run asynchronously, but I’m trying to do local, 2-4 frames bundle adjustment here. The problem of false positives is especially difficult for images of patterned environment, where some image parts are similar or repeated.
Here mismatched correspondence marked with blue line (points 15-28).

As you can see it’s not easy for any descriptor to tell the difference between points 13(correct) and 15(wrong) on the left image – their neighborhood is practically the same:

Such situations could easily happen not only indoor, but also in cityscape, industrial, and others regular environments.
One solution for such cases is to increase descriptor radius, to process a bigger patch around the point, but that would create problems of its own, for example too much false negatives.
Other approach is to use geometric consistency of the image points positions.
There are at least two ways to do it.
One is to consider displacements of corresponding points between frames. Here is example from paper by Kanazawa et al “Robast Image Matching Preserving Global Geometric Consistency”

This method first gathering local displacement statistic around each points, filter out outliers and and apply smoothing filter. Here are original matches, matches after applying consistency check and matches after applying smoothing filter.

However this method works best for dense, regular sets of feature points. For small, sparse set of points it does not improving situation much.
Here is a second approach. Build graph out of feature points for each frame.

Local topological structure of the two graphs is different because of false positives. It’s easy to find graph vertices/edges which cause inconsistency – edges marked blue.They can be found for example by signs of crossproducts between edges. After offending vertices found they are removed:

There are different ways to build graph out of feature points. Simplest is nearest neighbors, but may be Delaney triangulation or DSP can do better.

11, December, 2009

## Still checking Gauss-Newton

Though Levenberg-Marquardt works I’m still trying to save Gauss-Newton, especially as I’ve read paper saying that Gauss-Newton with dogleg trust-region works well for bundle adjustment. I’ll probably try direct substitution with Cholesky rank-1 update and constrained optimization.

13, October, 2009 Posted by | Coding AR, computer vision | , , , | Comments Off on Still checking Gauss-Newton

## Solution – free gauge

Looks like the problem was not the large Gauss-Newton residue. The problem was gauge fixing.
Most of bundle adjustment algorithms are not gauge invariant inherently (for details check Triggs “Bundle adjustment – a modern synthesis”, chapter 9 “Gauge Freedom”). Practically that means that method have one or more free parameters which could be chosen arbitrary (for example scale), but which influence solution in non-invariant way (or don’t influence solution if algorithm is gauge invariant). Gauge fixing is the choice of the values for that free parameters. There exist at least one gauge invariant bundle adjustment method (generalization of Levenberg-Marquardt with complete matrix correction instead of diagonal only correction) , but it is order of magnitude more computational expensive.
I’ve used fixing coordinate of one of the 3d points for gauge fixing. Because method is not gauge invariant solution depend on the choice of that fixed point. The problem occurs when the chosen point is “bad” – error in feature point detector for this point is so big that it contradict to the rest of the picture. Mismatching in the point correspondence can cause the same problem.
In my case, fixing coordinate of chosen point caused “accumulation” of residual error in that point. This is easy to explain – other points can decrease reprojection error both by moving/rotating camera and by shifting their coordinates, but fixed point can do it only by moving/rotating camera. It looks like if the point was “bad” from the start it can become even worse next iteration as the error accumulate – positive feedback look causing method become unstable. That’s of cause only my observations, I didn’t do any formal analysis.
The obvious solution is to redistribute residual error among all the points – that mean drop gauge fixing and use free gauge. Free gauge is causing arbitrary scaling of the result, but the result can be rescaled later. However there is the cost. Free gauge means matrix is singular – not invertible and Gauss-Newton method can not work. So I have to switch to less efficient and more computationally expensive Levenberg-Marquardt. For now it seems working.
PS Free gauge matrix is not singular, just not well-defined and has degenerate minimum. So constrained optimization still may works.
PPS Gauge Invariance is also important concept in physics and geometry.
PPPS While messing with Quasi-Newton – it seems there is an error in chapter 10.2 of “Numerical Optimization” by Nocedal&Wright. In the secant equation instead of $S_{k+1}(x_{k+1} - x_{k}) = J^{T}_{k+1}r_{k+1} - J^{T}_{k}r_{k}$ should be $S_{k+1}(x_{k+1} - x_{k}) = J^{T}_{k+1}r_{k+1} - J^{T}_{k}r_{k+1}$

11, October, 2009 Posted by | Coding AR, computer vision | , , , , , | Comments Off on Solution – free gauge

## Bundle Adjustemnt on the Mars with Rover

Just found out – Mars Rovers used bundle adjustment for its localization and rocks modeling:
“Purpose of algorithm:
To perform autonomous long-range rover localization based on bundle adjustment (BA) technology.
Processing steps of the algorithm include interest point extraction and matching, intra- and inter- stereo tie point selection, automatic cross-site tie point selection by rock extraction, modeling and matching, and bundle adjustment”

6, August, 2009 Posted by | computer vision | , , , , , | Comments Off on Bundle Adjustemnt on the Mars with Rover

## Video Surveillance is Useless

Found this interesting slide presentation form Peter Kovesi, inventor of phase congruency edge detector. It basically saying, that on current tech level video surveillance is useless for face identification. What follow is that it’s actually harmful, due to wrong impression of it’s reliability.
Also on his page – some fun animation or How to Animate Impossible Objects

PS Fourier phase approach to feature detection looks really promising, especially if to find some low computation cost modification.

18, July, 2009

## Tracking planes in the city

In relation to tracking cityscape I did some planar segmentation test. Segmented FAST generated corners with simple 5-points projective invariant.
In some cases 5-point give some rough approximation:

In some cases outliers are quite bad – some point have very close projective invariant but still are in diffferent planes.

So simple method not quite work…

19, March, 2009