Evaluating Color Descriptors for Object and Scene Recognition

—Image category recognition is important to access visual information on the level of objects and scene types. So far, intensity-based descriptors have been widely used for feature extraction at salient points. To increase illumination invariance and discriminative power, color descriptors have been proposed. Because many different descriptors exist, a structured overview is required of color invariant descriptors in the context of image category recognition. Therefore, this paper studies the invariance properties and the distinctiveness of color descriptors (software to compute the color descriptors from this paper is available from http://www.colordescriptors.com) in a structured way. The analytical invariance properties of color descriptors are explored, using a taxonomy based on invariance properties with respect to photometric transformations, and tested experimentally using a data set with known illumination conditions. In addition, the distinctiveness of color descriptors is a...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: PAMI
• Authors: Koen E. A. van de Sande, Theo Gevers, Cees G. M. Snoek
• Keywords: Category Recognition, Color Descriptors, Invariance Properties, PAMI 2010