Numerical stability of fast computation algorithms of Zernike moments

A detailed, comparative study of the numerical stability of the recursive algorithms, widely used to calculate the Zernike moments of an image, is presented in this paper. While many papers, introducing fast algorithms for the computation of Zernike moments have been presented in the literature, there is not any work studying the numerical behaviour of these methods. These algorithms have been in the past compared to each other only according to their computational complexity, without been given the appropriate attention, as far as their numerical stability is concerned, being the most significant part of the algorithms’ reliability. The present contribution attempts to fill this gap in the literature, since it mainly demonstrates that the usefulness of a recursive algorithm is defined not only by its low computational complexity, but most of all by its numerical robustness. This paper exhaustively compares some well known recursive algorithms for the computation of Zernike moments and sets the appropriate conditions in which each algorithm may fall in an unstable state. The experiments show that any of these algorithms can be unstable under some conditions and thus the need to develop more stable algorithms is of major importance. 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.