Texture Analysis with Local Binary Patterns

The LBP operator is a theoretically simple yet very powerful method of analyzing textures. Through its recent extensions, it has been made into a really powerful measure of image texture, showing excellent results in terms of accuracy and computational complexity in many empirical studies. The LBP operator can be seen as a unifying approach to the traditionally divergent statistical and structural models of texture analysis. Texture is described in terms of micro-primitives (textons) and their statistical placement rules. Optionally, the primitives may be coupled with a complementary measure of local image contrast, which measures the strength of the primitives. In this chapter the relation of the LBP operator to other texture analysis methods is explained. The chapter shows how the LBP combines aspects of statistical and structural texture analysis, and why it is called a “unifying approach”. The theoretical foundation of the operator is explained starting from a definition of texture in a local neighborhood. A number of extensions to the basic operator are also introduced. The extensions include three different multi-scale models, an opponent color operator and a rotation invariant version. Finally, a number of successful applications of the operator are highlighted.