Patent ID: 8270724

Claim:
An image signature matching device, comprising: a matching unit for matching an image signature of a first image and an image signature of a second image which are generated by a generation method including: extracting region features from respective sub-regions of a plurality of pairs of sub-regions in an image; for each of the pairs of sub-regions, quantizing a difference value between the region features of two sub-regions forming a pair, wherein when performing quantization, the difference value is quantized to a particular quantization value if an absolute value of the difference value is smaller than a predetermined value; and using a collection of elements which are quantization values calculated for the respective pairs of sub-regions as an image signature to be used for discriminating the image, wherein the matching unit matches the image signature of the first image and the image signature of the second image in such a manner that a weight of an element having the particular quantization value is reduced.