SURE: Surface Entropy for Distinctive 3D Features

In this paper, we present SURE features – a novel combination of interest point detector and descriptor for 3D point clouds and depth images. We propose an entropy-based interest operator that selects distinctive points on surfaces. It measures the variation in surface orientation from surface normals in the local vicinity of a point. We complement our approach by the design of a view-pose-invariant descriptor that captures local surface curvature properties, and we propose optional means to incorporate colorful texture information seamlessly. In experiments, we compare our approach to a state-of-the-art feature detector in depth images (NARF) and demonstrate similar repeatability of our detector. Our novel pair of detector and descriptor achieves superior results for matching interest points between images and also requires lower computation time.