This paper presents a method for extracting distinctive invariant features from images, which can be used to perform reliable matching between different images of an object or scene. The features are invariant to image scale and rotation, and are shown to provide robust matching across a a substantial range of affine distortion, addition of noise, change in 3D viewpoint, and change in illumination. The features are highly distinctive, in the sense that a single feature can be correctly matched with high probability against a large database of features from many images. This paper also describes an approach to using these features for object recognition. The recognition proceeds by matching individual features to a database of features from known objects using a fast nearest-neighbor algorithm, followed by a Hough transform to identify clusters belonging to a single object, and finally performing verification through leastsquares solution for consistent pose parameters. This approach to recognition can robustly identify objects among clutter and occlusion while achieving near real-time performance.

Consider a set S of n data points in real d-dimensional space, R d , where distances are measured using any Minkowski metric. In nearest neighbor searching we preprocess S into a data structure, so that given any query point q 2 R d , the closest point of S to q can be reported quickly. Given any positive real ffl, a data point p is a (1 + ffl)-approximate nearest neighbor of q if its distance from q is within a factor of (1 + ffl) of the distance to the true nearest neighbor. We show that it is possible to preprocess a set of n points in R d in O(dn log n) time and O(dn) space, so that given a query point q 2 R d , and ffl ? 0, a (1 + ffl)-approximate nearest neighbor of q can be computed in O(c d;ffl log n) time, where c d;ffl d d1 + 6d=ffle d is a factor depending only on dimension and ffl. In general, we show that given an integer k 1, (1 + ffl)-approximations to the k nearest neighbors of q can be computed in additional O(kd log n) time.

... process a set S of points in so that the points of S lying inside a query R region can be reported or counted quickly. Wesurvey the known techniques and data structures for range searching and describe their application to other related searching problems.

We formulate the content-based image in-dexing problem as a multi-dimensional nearest-neighbor search problem, and de-velop/implement an optimistic vantage-point tree algorithm that can dynamically adapt the indexed search process to the character-istics of given queries. Based on our perfor-mance study, the system typically only needs to touch less than 20 % of the index entries for well-behaved queries, i.e., when the query images are relatively close to their nearest neighbors in the database. We also report in this paper the results of extensive perfor-mance experiments, which characterise the

Given a set S of n sites (points), and a distance measure d, the nearest neighbor searching problem is to build a data structure so that given a query point q, the site nearest to q can be found quickly. This paper gives a data structure for this problem; the data structure is built using the distance function as a “black box”. The structure is able to speed up nearest neighbor searching in a variety of settings, for example: points in low-dimensional or structured Euclidean space, strings under Hamming and edit distance, and bit vector data from an OCR application. The data structures are observed to need linear space, with a modest constant factor. The preprocessing time needed per site is observed to match the query time. The data structure can be viewed as an application of a “kd-tree ” approach in the metric space setting, using Voronoi regions of a subset in place of axis-aligned boxes. 1

This is the preliminary version of a chapter that will appear in the Handbook on Computational Geometry, edited by J.-R. Sack and J. Urrutia. A comprehensive overview is given of algorithms and data structures for proximity problems on point sets in IR D . In particular, the closest pair problem, the exact and approximate post-office problem, and the problem of constructing spanners are discussed in detail. Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 The static closest pair problem 4 2.1 Preliminary remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2 Algorithms that are optimal in the algebraic computation tree model . 5 2.2.1 An algorithm based on the Voronoi diagram . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2.2 A divide-and-conquer algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2.3 A plane sweep algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.3 A deterministic algorithm that uses indirect addressing . . . . . . . . . 7 2.3.1 The degraded grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...

Nearest neighbor searching is an important geometric subproblem in vector quantization.

This paper proposes new methods to answer approximate nearest neighbor queries on a set of n points in d-dimensional Euclidean space. For any fixed constant d, a data structure with O(" (1\Gammad)=2 n log n) preprocessing time and O(" (1\Gammad)=2 log n) query time achieves approximation factor 1 + " for any given 0 ! " ! 1; a variant reduces the "-dependence by a factor of " \Gamma1=2 . For any arbitrary d, a data structure with O(d 2 n log n) preprocessing time and O(d 2 log n) query time achieves approximation factor O(d 3=2 ). Applications to various proximity problems are discussed. 1 Introduction Let P be a set of n point sites in d-dimensional space IR d . In the well-known post office problem, we want to preprocess P into a data structure so that a site closest to a given query point q (called the nearest neighbor of q) can be found efficiently. Distances are measured under the Euclidean metric. The post office problem has many applications within computational...

In spite of extensive and continuing research, for various geometric search problems (such as nearest neighbor search), the best algorithms known have performance that degrades exponentially in the dimension. This phenomenon is sometimes called the curse of dimensionality. Recent results [38, 37, 40] show that in some sense it is possible to avoid the curse of dimensionality for the approximate nearest neighbor search problem. But must the exact nearest neighbor search problem suffer this curse? We provide some evidence in support of the curse. Specifically we investigate the exact nearest neighbor search problem and the related problem of exact partial match within the asymmetric communication model first used by Miltersen [43] to study data structure problems. We derive non-trivial asymptotic lower bounds for the exact problem that stand in contrast to known algorithms for approximate nearest neighbor search. 1

We propose a simple, general, randomized technique to reduce certain geometric optimization problems to their corresponding decision problems. These reductions increase the expected time complexity by only a constant factor and eliminate extra logarithmic factors in previous, often more complicated, deterministic approaches (such as parametric searching). Faster algorithms are thus obtained for a variety of problems in computational geometry: finding minimal k-point subsets, matching point sets under translation, computing rectilinear p-centers and discrete 1centers, and solving linear programs with k violations. 1 Introduction Consider the classic randomized algorithm for finding the minimum of r numbers minfA[1]; : : : ; A[r]g: Algorithm rand-min 1. randomly pick a permutation hi 1 ; : : : ; i r i of h1; : : : ; ri 2. t /1 3. for k = 1; : : : ; r do 4. if A[i k ] ! t then 5. t / A[i k ] 6. return t By a well-known fact [27, 44], the expected number of times that step 5 is execut...