A local feature with multiple line descriptors and its speeded-up matching algorithm

This paper introduces a local feature with multiple line descriptors and its unique matching algorithm. Previous approaches describe the local feature based on image patch that uses single feature point as the approximate center. But there is no accurate information about orientation or scale in the image patch. On the contrary, line segment possesses it. For this reason, we extract a line descriptor from a model of line segment that links two randomly selected feature points. There forms a mesh topology due to the fact that a line descriptor links two feature points and meanwhile a feature point links multiple line descriptors. But as a price to pay for it, there comes a large number of line descriptors that is bad for matching descriptors. In order to speed up the matching process, we design a unique matching algorithm by exploiting the mesh topology. The result shows that the local feature with multiple line descriptors outperforms other classical features based on image patch on robustness. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier Inc.