Fast detection and recognition of QR codes in high-resolution images

This paper deals with detection and recognition of matrix codes, such as the QR codes, in high-resolution images of real-world scenes. The goal is to provide a detector capable of operation in real time even on high-resolution images (several megapixels). We present an efficient algorithm for detection of possible occurrences of the codes. This algorithm is characterized by a very low false negative rate and a reasonable false alarm rate. The results of our algorithm are to be followed by an accurate detection/recognition algorithm. We propose to use a recent matrix code detection and recognition algorithm based on Hough transform, because it can reuse some information computed by our new pre-detection algorithm and thus a further reduce of computational demands can be achieved. Since there are no publicly available annotated datasets for evaluation of this kind of algorithm, we collected a number of images and annotated them; these images will be made publicly available to allow for a proper comparison. Our algorithm was evaluated on this dataset and the results are reported in the paper.