A variety of computer vision applications depend on the efficiency of image matching algorithms used. Various descriptors are designed to detect and match features in images. Deployment of this algorithms in mobile applications creates a need for low computation time. Binary descriptors requires less computation time than float-point based descriptors because of the intensity comparison between pairs of sample points and comparing after creating a binary string. In order to decrease time complexity, quality of keypoints matched is often compromised. We propose a keypoint descriptor named Morphological Retina Keypoint Descriptor (MREAK) inspired by the function of human pupil which dilates and constricts responding to the amount of light. By using morphological operators of opening and closing and modifying the retinal sampling pattern accordingly, an increase in the number of accurately matched keypoints is observed. Our results show that matched keypoints are more efficient than FREAK descriptor and requires low computation time than various descriptors like SIFT, BRISK and SURF.
@cite_10: We propose to use binary strings as an efficient feature point descriptor, which we call BRIEF. We show that it is highly discriminative even when using relatively few bits and can be computed using simple intensity difference tests. Furthermore, the descriptor similarity can be evaluated using the Hamming distance, which is very efficient to compute, instead of the L2 norm as is usually done. As a result, BRIEF is very fast both to build and to match. We compare it against SURF and U-SURF on standard benchmarks and show that it yields a similar or better recognition performance, while running in a fraction of the time required by either.
Float-point based descriptor with more accuracy requires heavy computation time. Due to increasing demand of mobile applications, a demand of low computation time is noted. Binary descriptors use haming distance and XOR operation for matching keypoints and therefore requires less computation time as compared to float-point descriptors. A sampling pattern is formed around the keypoint and a binary string is computed by comparing intensity values of sample points. BRIEF @cite_10 is a binary descriptor in which there is no specific sampling pattern or any method for orientation calculation. The sampling pairs for forming binary strings are randomly selected. Therefore, BRIEF is less accurate for minute changes in the size or alignment of an image.