Retrieval and Localization of Multiple Specific Objects with Hough Voting Based Ranking and A Contrario Decision

We present an algorithm for simultaneously recognizing and localizing planar textured objects in an image. The algorithm can scale efficiently with respect to a large number of objects added into the database. In contrast to the current state-of-the-art on large scale image search, our algorithm can accurately work with query images consisting of several specific objects and/or multiple instances of the same object. Our proposed algorithm consists of two major steps. The first step is to generate a set of hypotheses that provides information about the identities and the locations of objects in the image. To serve this purpose, we extend Bag-Of-Visual-Word (BOVW) image retrieval by incorporating a re-ranking scheme based on the Hough voting technique. Subsequently, in the second step, we propose a geometric verification algorithm based on A Contrario decision framework to draw out the final detection results from the generated hypotheses. We demonstrate the performance of the algorithm on the scenario of recognizing CD covers with a database consisting of more than ten thousand images of different CD covers. Our algorithm yield to the detection results of more than 90% precision and recall within a few seconds of processing time per image. key words: recognition, localization, detection, image retrieval, object retrieval, scalable, large scale, bag of visual word, Hough voting, a contrario