Patent ID: 6192150
Filing Date: 2001-02-20
Classification: G06F,G06T,Y10S

Abstract:
An apparatus for matching a query texture with a plurality of images, each containing a plurality of textured regions, said apparatus comprising:feature extraction means for identifying a plurality of regions in the plurality of images, each region containing a texture pattern, extracting an N-component feature vector for each region, and normalizing the extracted N-component feature vectors, where N is an even integer greater than or equal to 2;normalization means for normalizing the extracted N-component texture feature vectors;arranging means for arranging each N-component feature vector into a 2-dimensional representation with spatial frequency increasing along one dimension and orientation changing in another dimension;extraction means for extracting D texture characteristics that are invariant to texture scale and orientation from each 2-dimensional representation and forming a D-dimensional feature vector, where D for said D texture characteristics and said D-dimensional is an integer greater than 1;computing means for computing the similarity between the query texture and the plurality of images according to the similarity between a D-dimensional feature vector of the query texture and the D-dimensional feature vectors of the plurality of textured regions in the plurality of images; andimage ranking means for ranking the plurality of images according to their similarity to the query texture.