SIFT-Rank: Ordinal description for invariant feature correspondence

Abstract

This paper investigates ordinal image description for invariant feature correspondence. Ordinal description is a meta-technique which considers image measurements in terms of their ranks in a sorted array, instead of the measurement values themselves. Rank-ordering normalizes descriptors in a manner invariant under monotonic deformations of the underlying image measurements, and therefore serves as a simple, non-parametric substitute for ad hoc scaling and thresholding techniques currently used. Ordinal description is particularly well-suited for invariant features, as the high dimensionality of state-of-the-art descriptors permits a large number of unique rank-orderings, and the computationally complex step of sorting is only required once after geometrical normalization. Correspondence trials based on a benchmark data set show that in general, rank-ordered SIFT (SIFT-rank) descriptors outperform other state-of-the-art descriptors in terms of precision-recall, including standard SIFT and GLOH.