Patent ID: 8913851

Claim:
A computer based method of image fingerprinting, comprising: (a) determining points of interest of an image, each point of interest corresponding to a feature of the image; (b) determining a bounding area that encompasses said points of interest; (c) determining a transformation that transforms the bounding area to an oriented bounding area, wherein the oriented bounding area has a predetermined size, shape, and orientation, the determining (c) further comprising: (i) rotating as necessary to align the edges of the bounding area with predetermined first and second perpendicular axes, (ii) scaling along the first axis as necessary for a first edge of the bounding area to have a length equal to a predefined length L, and (iii) stretching along the second axis as necessary for a second edge of the bounding area to have a length equal to the first edge of the bounding area; (d) transforming the points of interest in accordance with the determined transformation such that the transformed points of interest are encompassed by the oriented bounding area; (e) encoding the transformed points of interest transformed in step (d) to create a fingerprint, wherein the fingerprint can be used to identify at least a portion of the image independently of a size, shape, and orientation of the image; and (f) selecting the image to be a frame of a video, wherein the fingerprint can be used to identify the frame of the video.