Real-Time Trac Sign Detection

using Hierarchical Distance Matching

by

Craig Northway

A thesis submitted to the

School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering The University of Queensland

for the degree of

BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING

October 2002

ii

Statement of originality
I declare that the work presented in the thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original and my own work, except as acknowledged in the text, and that the material has not been submitted, either in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other university.

Craig Northway

iii

iv

Acknowledgments
There are many people who deserve acknowledgment for the help I have received while working on this thesis and during my 16 years of study. Unfortunately its impossible to mention them all! From an academic perspective I must thank my supervisor Brian Lovell for his technical help when I was struggling, excellent view of the big picture and promotion of my work. Shane Goodwin deserves mention for his help as the lab supervisor organising cameras and facilities. The excellent background Vaughan Clarksons course, ELEC3600, gave me in this area was invaluable. Id like to thank all of my friends and family, particularly my girlfriend and best friend, Sarah Adsett and my parents Bruce and Rosalie Northway for their support. To my non-engineering friends Michael, Jesse and Jon, thanks, now its handed in you can contact me again. To all the engineers: Hope you enjoyed your degree as much as I have! Special thanks goes to Nia, for the use of her laptop. To Jenna and Ben Appleton and Simon Long for their signals related technical insights. Ill also single out Toby, Vivien, Scott, Leon and the rest of the SEES exec.

Get Naked for SEES 2002!

vi

Abstract
Smart Cars that avoid pedestrians, and remind you of the speed limits? Vehicles will soon have the ability to warn drivers of pending situations or automatically take evasive action. Due to the visual nature of existing infrastructure, signs and line markings, image processing will play a large part in these systems. This thesis will develop a real-time trac sign detection algorithm using hierarchical distance matching. There are four deliverables for the thesis:

1. A hierarchy creation system built in MATLAB 2. A prototype Matching system also built in MATLAB 3. A real-time application in Visual C++ using the DirectShow SDK and IPL Image Processing and OpenCV libraries. 4. Examples of other uses for the matching algorithm.

The hierarchy creation system is based on simple graph theory and creates small (< 50) hierarchies of templates. The prototype matching system uses static images and was designed to explore the matching algorithm. Matching of up to 20 frames per second using a 30+ leaf hierarchy was achieved in the real-time with a few false matches. Other matching examples demonstrated include Letter matching, rotational and scale invariant matching. Future work on this thesis would include the development of a nal verication stage to eliminate the false matches. Refactoring of the systems design would also allow for larger hierarchies to be created and searched, increasing the robustness and applications of the algorithm. vii

viii

Contents

Statement of originality

iii

Acknowledgments

Abstract

vii

1 Introduction

2 Topic 2.1 2.2 Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deliverables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3 4 4

3 Assumptions

4 Specication 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 MATLAB Hierarchy Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MATLAB Matching Prototype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Real-Time Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Smart Vehicle System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7 7 8 8 8

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CONTENTS

5 Literature Review 5.1 5.2 Historical Work: Chamfer Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Current Matching Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 5.2.2 5.3 Current Hierarchical Distance Matching Applications . . . . . . . . . . .

11 11 12 12 14 15 16 17 17

Other Possible Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hierarchies and Trees 5.3.1 5.3.2 5.3.3

Graph Theoretic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nearest Neighbour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Colour Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6 Theory 6.1 6.2 Chamfer Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Feature Extraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 6.3 6.4 Edge detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

19 19 20 20 22 23 25 26 26 27 28 28

Distance Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Distance Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.1 6.4.2 6.4.3 6.4.4 Reverse Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Oriented Edge Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Coarse/Fine Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hierarchy Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6.5

Tree/Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.1 Graph Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6.5.2 6.6

Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29 33

Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7 Hardware Design and Implementation 7.1 Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35 36

8 Software Design and Implementation 8.1 Hierarchy Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1.1 8.2 Image Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37 37 38 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 46 47 48 49 52 55 55

Group Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.1 8.2.2 8.2.3 8.2.4 8.2.5 8.2.6 Finding groups - setup.m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Score Calculation - createtemps.m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hierarchy Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hierarchy Optimisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multi-Level Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Final Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

8.3

MATLAB Prototype Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.1 8.3.2 8.3.3 8.3.4 8.3.5 8.3.6 Basic System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Masking Reverse Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pyramid Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Directional Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rejected Renements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Final Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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CONTENTS

8.4

Real-Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4.1 8.4.2 8.4.3 8.4.4 8.4.5 8.4.6 8.4.7 Matching Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Object Oriented Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Actual Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Further Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Enhancements/Renements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Final Matching Algorithm Used. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Further Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

56 56 56 58 59 59 60 60

9 Results 9.1 Hierarchy Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1.1 9.2 Hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63 63 63 65 65 65 66 66 67 67 67 68 68 68

Matlab Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.1 Matlab Matching Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9.3

Real-Time Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3.1 9.3.2 9.3.3 9.3.4 9.3.5 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Letter Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Size Variant Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rotational Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9.4

My Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4.1 9.4.2 Skills Learnt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Strengths/Weaknesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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10 Future Development 10.1 Video Footage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 Temporal Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 Better OO Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4 Improved Hierarchy Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.5 Optimisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.6 Final Verication Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

69 69 70 70 70 70 70

11 Conclusions

71

12 Publication 12.1 Australias Innovators Of The Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73 73

A A.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.1.1 Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.1.2 Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.1.3 Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.1.4 Angle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.1.5 Damage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.1.6 Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.1.7 Computer Vision Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.1.8 Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.2 Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

79 79 79 79 79 80 80 80 81 81 82

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CONTENTS

A.2.1 MATLAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.2.2 Direct Show . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.2.3 IPL Image Processing Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.2.4 Open CV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.3 Extra Hierarchy Implementation Flowcharts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.4 Prototype Orientation Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.4.1 Orientated Edge Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.4.2 Orientation Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.5 Rejected Prototype Implementations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.5.1 Localised Tresholding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.5.2 Dierent Feature Extractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.5.3 Sub-Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.6 UML of Real-Time System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.7 Code Details of Real-Time System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.7.1 Distance Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.7.2 Deallocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

82 82 82 82 84 87 87 87 89 89 91 91 92 95 95 95 96 97 98

A.7.3 mytree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.7.4 Template Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.8 Tested Enhancements/Renements to Real-Time System . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A.9 Hierarchy Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 A.9.1 Diamond Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 A.9.2 Circular Signs Scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

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A.10 Matlab Matching Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 A.11 CD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 A.12 Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 A.12.1 Listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 A.12.2 Compilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

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CONTENTS

List of Figures

1.1

System Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3.1

Likely Sign Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.1

Real Time Trac Sign System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5.1 5.2

Binary Target Hierarchy [1] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Image Clustering with Graph Theory [2] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

14 16

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9

Canny Edge Detection Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-4 Distance Transform (not divided by 3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overlaying of Edge Image [3] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Original Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Distance Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matching Techniques [4] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Template Distance Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Search Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21 23 23 24 24 24 25 25 27

xvii

xviii

LIST OF FIGURES

6.10 Simple Graph [2] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.11 Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.12 Breadth First Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

28 30 32

7.1

Block Diagram from GraphEdit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

36

8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9

Hierarchy Creation Block Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Image Acquisition Flowchart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My Chamfer Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Group Creation Block Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hierarchy Creation Flowchart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . combinegroups.m Flowchart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Simple Matching System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Noise Behind Sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reverse Matching Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

38 39 40 41 44 45 47 48 49 50 52 53 57 61

8.10 Pyramid Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.11 Oriented Edge Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.12 Orientation Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.13 Intended Class Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.14 My Size Variant Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9.1 9.2 9.3

Circular Sign Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Sign 60 Sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

64 66 67

LIST OF FIGURES

xix

A.1 Multi-Resolution Hierarchy [4]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

80 84 85 86 89 90 92 93 94 98 98

A.2 ndbestnotin.m Flowchart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.3 anneal.m Flowchart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.4 remove.m Flowchart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.5 Simple Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.6 Localised Thesholding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.7 Intended Sequence Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.8 Actual Class Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.9 Actual Sequence Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.10 Spiral Search Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.11 Straight Search Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A.12 Untruncated Distance Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 A.13 Truncated Distance Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 A.14 Original Scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 A.15 Optimised Scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 A.16 First Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 A.17 First Group Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 A.18 Second Group, template = self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 A.19 Third Group, template = self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 A.20 Fourth Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 A.21 Fourth Group Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 A.22 Fifth Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

xx

LIST OF FIGURES

A.23 Fifth Group Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 A.24 Sixth Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 A.25 Sixth Group Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 A.26 Seventh Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 A.27 Seventh Group Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 A.28 Eigth Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 A.29 Eight Group Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 A.30 First Template Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 A.31 First Template Group Combinational Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 A.32 Second Template Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 A.33 Second Template Group Combinational Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 A.34 Last Template Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

A.35 Last Template Group Combinational Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 A.36 Second Level Optimisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 A.37 Original Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 A.38 Oriented Edge Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 A.39 Distance Transform Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 A.40 Scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 A.41 Closer View of scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 A.42 Match . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

List of Tables

8.1

Directional Scoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

54

A.1 Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 A.2 MATLAB Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 A.3 Real-Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

xxi

xxii

LIST OF TABLES

Chapter 1

Introduction
This thesis will develop a real-time trac sign matching application. The system will be useful for autonomous vehicles and smart cars. After testing the matching on trac signs, other implementations shall further demonstrate the eectiveness of the algorithm. A Trac Sign Recognition system has the potential to reduce the road toll. By highlighting signs and recording signs that have been past, the system would help keep the driver aware of the trac situation. There also exists the possibility for computer control of vehicles and prompting for pedestrians and hazardous road situations.

Figure 1.1: System Output

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

If reliable smart vehicle systems can be established on PC platforms upgrading and producing cars as smart vehicles would be cheap and practical. The European Union are heavily sponsoring research into this technology through a smart vehicle initiative with a view to decreasing the road toll. Hierarchical Distance Matching could be applied to a range of other object detection problems. Examples of these include pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, military targets, text of known font, tools, car models, known local landmarks, etc. These recognition cases could be used in applications such as autonomous vehicles, vehicle identication and mobile robots. This thesis will help establish a working knowledge of such systems and demonstrate the simplicity of algorithm development on a PC platform. If the goals of the project can be met the developed application (C++) and associated utilities (MATLABT M ) will form a general solution for hierarchy creation and implementation. Some systems already developed by vehicle manufacturers include a night vision system which Cadillac have introduced into their Deville vehicles. This system projects an image of the road with obstacles highlighted onto the windscreen. Mercedes-Benz Freightliners Lane Departure System uses a video camera to monitor lane changes alerting the driver to lane changes without the use of indicators, possibly due to driver error or fatigue. Daimler Chrysler have produced a prototype autonomous vehicle capable of handling many and varied trac scenarios. It uses a vision system to detect pedestrians and trac signs.

Chapter 2

Topic
From the background research into shape based object recognition it was obvious that Gavrilas Chamfer methods [4, 5] are superior to other approaches for implementation on a general purpose PC platform. Other methods used for trac sign detection have included colour detection[6, 7], colour then shape [8, 9], simulated annealing[10] and neural networks [11]. None of these have been able to produce an accurate real-time system. Gavrilas success is due to the simplicity of his algorithm and its suitability to standard computation and the SIMD instructions. It involves repeated simple operations (such as addition, multiplication) on the data set which is ecient when computed in this manner. Another factor contributing to the speed of the algorithm is the coarse/ne and hierarchical nature allowing signicant speed-ups (without sacricing accuracy) when compared to exhaustive matching. It can be mathematical shown [4, 5] that this pyramid style search will not miss a match. Gavrilas success dened the topic and prompted further research into hierarchies and distance matching. The topic for this thesis is Real-time Trac Sign Matching, using Hierarchical Distance (Chamfer) Matching. This thesis intends to prove the hypothesis that multiple object detection, such as trac signs, can be successful in real-time using a hierarchy of images. Thus video footage can be searched for N objects simultaneously without the extensive calculations necessary for an exhaustive search in real-time on a general purpose platform. 3

CHAPTER 2. TOPIC

2.1

Extensions

The extensions to previous work [4, 5] and thus the original contribution presented in this thesis will be the automated hierarchy creation, the independent development and implementation of Hierarchical Chamfer Matching (HCM) and the evaluation of HCM as a method for object detection.

2.2

Deliverables

Based on these goals a MATLABT M based Hierarchy creation implementation, a prototype static matching implementation in MATLABT M and a real-time HCM Object Detection implementation will be delivered. The development of this algorithm will allow hierarchies other than the initially intended Trac Signs to be used, e.g. pedestrians, alpha-numeric characters, car models (from outline/badge), hand gestures.

Chapter 3

Assumptions
Before commencement of this project some of the assumptions were identied. These assumptions must be reasonable for the thesis to be successful. Many of these assumptions are for the specic task of trac sign detection. The following assumptions exist:

Camera should be of a high enough quality to resolve signs at speed. Lighting must be such that the camera can produce a reasonable image. Signs should be positioned consistently in the footage. Angle of the signs in relation to the cars positions should not be extreme. Signs should not be damaged. Due to the size invariance of the method the sign should pass through the specic size(s) without being obscured. The Computer Vision functions should operate as specied. Objects being detected must be similar in shape for the hierarchy to be eective.

Further Details of these are in Appendix A.1

CHAPTER 3. ASSUMPTIONS

Figure 3.1: Likely Sign Position

Chapter 4

Specication
The goals of this project are:

1. Establish an automated method of hierarchy creation that can be generalised to any database of objects with similar features. This system will initially be based in MATLAB. 2. A prototype matching system for static images also built in MATLAB 3. Program an implementation of this object detection in C++ using the Single-Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) instructions created for the Intel range of processors. This implementation will be the problem of trac sign recognition. 4. Demonstrate the algorithm on other matching problems.

The following species clearly the input and output of each deliverable. A brief specication of what a Smart Vehicle System may do is included.

4.1

MATLAB Hierarchy Creation

The hierarchy creation system should be able to synthesise an image hierarchy without user input into the classication. This system should work on image databases of reasonable. 7

CHAPTER 4. SPECIFICATION

Input A directory of images (which share similarity), and a threshold for the similarity. Output A hierarchy of images and combinational templates.

4.2

MATLAB Matching Prototype

This system should match trac signs/objects on still images accurately. It is not required to meet any time constraints Input An image hierarchy, and image to be matched. Output The image overlayed with matches.

4.3

Real-Time Implementation

This Real-Time Implementation should match objects at over 5 frames per second in reasonable circumstances. It will be written in Visual C++ based upon the DirectShow streaming media architecture, developed using the EZRGB24 example (from Microsoft DirectShow SDK A.2). The image processing operations will be performed by the IPL Image Processing and Open CV Libraries. Input Image hierarchy and video stream. Output Video Stream overlayed with matches.

4.4

Smart Vehicle System

A smart vehicle system for driver aid would be a self contained unit, shown in the block diagram (Figure 4.1). This unit would attach to the car either at manufacture or by retro-tting. It

4.4. SMART VEHICLE SYSTEM

would provide the driver with details via either verbal comments, or a heads-up display (output block). The system would recognise all common warning and speed signs (real-time detection

Figure 4.1: Real Time Trac Sign System block). It would be able to keep track of the current speed limit, allowing the driver to check their speed between signs. The system may have higher intelligence allowing it to tailor the hierarchy or matching chances to the situation, eg. if the car is in a 100km zone, a 30km speed sign would be unlikely. With the use of radar and other visual clues, the system may be able to control the car. This would avoid possible collisions and keep within the speed limits. The system must be careful not to lure the driver into a false sense of security. People should be wary of the systems ability, particularly in extreme situations, such as storms, snow, etc...

10

CHAPTER 4. SPECIFICATION

Chapter 5

Literature Review
The review of background material for this thesis will cover several topics, all relevant to the project. Firstly several historically signicant papers are reviewed. These papers form the basis of current matching techniques. Secondly, research into state of the art trac sign and shape based object detection applications is reviewed, justifying the choice of Hierarchical Based Chamfer Matching. Current research into image classication and grouping for search and retrieval is therefore also applicable to this topic. Basic works on trees and graph theory were examined briey, along with several mathematical texts to understand the concepts.

5.1

Historical Work: Chamfer Matching

Background work on HCMA (Hierarchical Chamfer Matching Algorithm) was started in the late 70s. The topic was revisited in the late 80s by Gunilla Borgefors [3], an authority on Distance Matching and Transforms. This is well before HCMA systems would have been practical for fast static matching, let alone real-time video. The algorithm was investigated again throughout the mid 90s when implementations on specic hardware became practical. The rst major work on chamfer matching was the 1977 paper Parametric Correspondence and chamfer matching: Two new techniques for image matching by H.G. Barrow et al. This work discussed the general concept of chamfer matching. That is minimising the generalised distance between two sets of edge points. It was initially an algorithm only suitable to ne-matching.

11

12

CHAPTER 5. LITERATURE REVIEW

Borgefors [3] extended this early work to present the idea of using a coarse/ne resolution search. This solved the major problem of the rst proposal, its limitation to ne matching. This algorithm used a distance transform proposed by its author, the 3-4 DT. The paper demonstrated the algorithms object detecting eectiveness on images of tools on a plain background. Tools can be recognised based solely on the outline in this situation hence are perfect for HCM. This was on static images. Borgefors also proposed the use of the technique for aerial image registration. This idea was later presented in [12]. The conclusions reached were that the results were good, even surprisingly good. Thus the HCMA is an excellent tool for edge matching, as long as it is used for matching task with in capability(sic). [3]. The mid-nineties saw several uses of distance transforms as matching algorithms. Considerable work done on Hausdor matching by Huttenlocher and Rucklidge in [13, 14] showed that the Hausdor distance could be used as a matching metric between two edge images. Their best results required at least 20 seconds to compute on a binary image of 360x240 pixels. This was in 1993, assuming Moores Law holds, then in 2002 with only hardware improvements, it should be possible in well under half a second. Hausdor matching, as with all distance matching techniques, requires the image to be overlayed over each template to score each match, this is a computationally expensive operation.

5.2

Current Matching Algorithms

Current approaches to shape based real-time object detection. These include Hierarchical Chamfer Matching, Orientated Pixel Matching and Neural Networks. The most successful work presented in this area is from Dairu Gavrila and associates at Daimler Chrysler using HCMA.

5.2.1

Current Hierarchical Distance Matching Applications

Daimler-Chrysler Autonomous Vehicle

Hierarchical Chamfer Matching (HCM) is currently being used in automated vehicle systems at Daimler-Chrysler. The systems for both trac signs and pedestrian detection are based on

5.2. CURRENT MATCHING ALGORITHMS

13

HCM. The most surprising result of this work is the success of rigid, scale and rotation invariant template based matching for a deformable contour i.e. pedestrian outlines. This approach may be unique. They have designed algorithms using the SIMD instruction sets provided by Intel for their MMX architecture. Their experiments show that the trac sign detection could be run at 10-15 HZ and the pedestrian detection at 1-5 Hz on a dual processor 450MHz Pentium system. They go onto prove that distance transforms provide a smoother similarity measure than correlations which enables the use of various ecient search algorithms to lock onto the correct solution. These ecient algorithms are coarse-ne searches and multiple template hierarchies. As suggested in these papers this matching technique is similar to Hausdor distance methods. Worst case measurements of matching templates are then considered to determine minimum thresholds that assure [the algorithm].will not miss a solution in their hierarchies of resolution/template. The hierarchy creation in this system is not fully automated. Their method of creating the hierarchy automatically uses a bottom-up approach and applies a K-meanslike algorithm at each level where K is the desired partition size. The clustering is achieved by trying various combinations of templates from a random starting point and minimising the maximum distance between the templates in a group and their chosen prototype. The optimisation is done with simulated annealing. The disadvantage of their early approaches was in the one-level tree created. The overall technique proposed by Diamler-Chrysler shows excellent results and is worthy of further development.

Target Recognition

An Automatic Target recognition system developed by Olson and Huttenlocher [1] uses a hierarchical search tree. Their matching technique employs oriented edge pixels, labelling each edge pixel with a direction. Translated, rotated and scaled views are incorporated into a hierarchy. Chamfer measures, though not employed in the matching (Hausdor matching) are used to cluster the edge maps into groups of two. A new template for each set of pairs is generated and the clustering continued until all templates belong to a single hierarchy. This creates a binary search tree (Figure 5.1). The hierarchy creation presented is a simple approach that may present good results. There is no mention of the real-time performance of the oriented edge pixel algorithm. It may not be quick enough for trac sign recognition.

14

CHAPTER 5. LITERATURE REVIEW

Figure 5.1: Binary Target Hierarchy [1] Planar Image Mosaicing

Hierarchical Chamfer Matching has been used successfully for Planar-Image Mosaicing. Dhanaraks and Covaisaruch [12] used HCMA to nd the best matching position from edge feature (sic) in multi resolution pyramid. They chose one image to be the distance image and another to be the polygon image. The resolution pyramids are built and matching is carried out by translating the polygon image across the distance image. The interesting concept used in this work was the thresholding for taking a match to the next level. If the score was less then the rejection value (max (max
percent 100 ))

the pixel was expanded to more positions in the next

pyramid level for matching. This is an interesting thresholding concept based on the maximum values rather than absolute.

5.2.2

Other Possible Techniques

Hausdor Matching

Many researchers have considered Hausdor matching [13, 14, 15] for object detection. It is a similar algorithm to chamfer matching, except the distance measure cannot be pre-processed. It is a valid approach for this application and will be considered as a possible matching strategy.

5.3. HIERARCHIES AND TREES

15

Neural Networks

Work by Daniel Rogahn [11] and papers such as [16] are example of neural network techniques for trac sign recognition. I do not have the necessary background knowledge to explore this properly.

Colour detection

Colour data has been used for matching in scenarios such as face detection [18, 19]. Some trac sign detection algorithms use it as a cue [6, 7, 8, 9]. It is an excellent technique for situations where the colours are constant and illumination can be controlled. Due to most colour representation schemes not being perceptively true, it is dicult to dene exact colours for matching. Previous work by myself on trac sign recognition has attempted to incorporate colour data into the matching process. The overhead of detecting the colour (even with a look up table) and the varying illumination made it dicult in this real-time scenario. Yellow diamond warning signs were quiet easily detectable as present in an image. Their features were not perceptible accurately from colour data alone. Signs such as those indicating speed limits have a thin red circle surrounding the details. My previous results have shown that on compressed video this red circle is destroyed by artifacts. It was impossible to determine if this circle was red or brown. By including its colour in the detection, many unrelated areas of ground and trees were also highlighted. Thus identication of signs was not plausible from colour detection alone, though it may still be a useful procedure for masking areas of interest. It may be more eective in streamed uncompressed video.

5.3

Hierarchies and Trees

The results shown by [4, 5] have been far superior to other research [6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 10, 19, 13, 26] into real time object identication. Further research was therefore carried out into tree structures and image grouping and classication. Image classication techniques have been examined in multimedia retrieval systems [20, 2, 21, 22]. Hierarchies and trees have also been investigated

16

CHAPTER 5. LITERATURE REVIEW

Figure 5.2: Image Clustering with Graph Theory [2] [23, 24]. With the increasing electronic availability of large amounts of multimedia material high speed retrieval systems (such as trees) have been the subject of signicant research.

5.3.1

Graph Theoretic Approach

Selim Askoy [2] used distance measures to obtain similarities between the images. The hierarchy creation was then looked upon as a graph clustering problem. The algorithm they proposed considers retrieving groups of images which not only match the template, but are also similar to each other. This has application to object recognition hierarchies. They

query the database and get back the best N matches. For each of those N matches we do a query and get back the best N matches again. Dene S as the set containing the original query image and the images that are retrieved as the results of the above queries. S will contain N 2 + 1 images in the worst case.

A graph is constructed of this set (each template is represented as a node) with the edges representing the distance measures between each template (Figure 5.2). Connected clusters that include the original query image are then found. The measure of inter-cluster similarity is established to determine which cluster should be returned. This approach sounds similar to that used in [4, 5] in assuring that each grouping was the closest. The clustering algorithm used is presented in the paper. The technique demonstrated in [2] was considered a simple and eective starting point for hierarchy creation in this thesis.

5.3. HIERARCHIES AND TREES

17

5.3.2

Nearest Neighbour

Huang et al [23] used trees established by the nearest neighbour algorithm and built using normalised cuts (partitions of a weighted graph that minimise the dissociation with other groups and maximises the association within the group) in a recursive nature. This technique proved eective in the paper, but was too complicated to pursue in an undergraduate thesis on image matching.

5.3.3

Colour Information

To group images [20] uses colour information, with a potentially useful clustering technique. The N images are placed into distinct clusters using their similarity measure. Two clusters are picked such that their similarity measure is the largest these then form a new cluster, reducing the number of unmerged clusters. The similarity of all the clusters is then computed again. This continues until a bounding parameter (no. of clusters, or similarity measure threshold) is reached. This creates a tree that can at most have two clusters branching o a parent cluster, yet each leaf cluster could contain more than two images. This allows the simplicity of a binary tree, with the added complexity of many leaves. To represent each cluster, after the tree has been created a cluster centre is established. They select a representative image of the cluster rather than compute a new composite image (rst proposed in [23]). Various methods such as linear regression and boolean features can be used for this. Their method of construction also allows trees to be created with uneven distances to leaves. This might provide a speed-up in matching where some images in the hierarchy are relatively unique, providing a short and certain path to them.

18

CHAPTER 5. LITERATURE REVIEW

Chapter 6

Theory
The theory behind this thesis is split into 3 main sections. Relevant image processing theories and techniques are explained rst. This is followed by the details of the graph theory and hierarchy basics necessary to understand and develop this work. Lastly some programming libraries that may not be familiar to all electrical engineers are mentioned. Image processing is a relatively dynamic eld where many problems are yet to have optimal solutions, but there are still many basic theories and methods that are accepted as the way of doing things. Some elements of the HCM algorithm use this type of method, but those relating to the hierarchical search are relatively new to the image processing eld.

6.1

Chamfer Matching

The basic idea of Chamfer (or Distance) Matching is to measure the distance between the features of an image and a template. If this distance measure is below or above a certain threshold it signies a match. The steps required are:

1. Feature Extraction 2. Distance Transform 3. Score the template at all locations

19

20

CHAPTER 6. THEORY

4. Determine whether the scores indicate a match

In Gavrilas Hierarchical Chamfer Matching Algorithm (HCMA), distance matching is applied to the scenario of matching multiple objects. When trying to match a set of images with sufcient similarity, a hierarchical approach can be used. Images can be grouped into a tree and represented by prototype templates that combine their similar features. By matching with prototypes rst a signicant speed-up can be observed compared to an exhaustive search for each template. The following section describes the theory behind each of the steps in simple Distance Matching, before going onto explain the theory of Gavrilas HCMA.

6.2

Feature Extraction

Shape based objection recognition starts with feature extraction representations of images. These features are usually corners and edges. Standard edge and corner detection algorithms such as Sobel ltering and Canny edge detection can be applied to colour/gray images to generate binary feature maps.

6.2.1

Edge detection

The goal of edge detection is to produce a line drawing. Ideally all edges of objects and changes in colour should be represented by a single line. There are algorithms that vary from simple to complex. The generalised form of edge detection is gradient approximation and thresholding. Of the edge detectors that use gradient approximation there are two types, those that use rst order derivatives and second order derivatives. The boundary of an object is generally a change in image intensity. Using a rst order gradient approximation changes in intensity will be highlighted, and areas of constant intensity will be ignored. To nd changes in intensity we need to examine the dierence between adjacent points.

6.2. FEATURE EXTRACTION

21

Canny Edge Detector The Canny Edge detector (Canny, 1986) is currently the most popular technique for image processing. It is used in a wide range of applications with successful results. It was formulated with 3 objectives: 1. Optimal detection with no spurious responses 2. Good localisation with minimal distance between detected and true edge position 3. Single response to eliminate multiple response to a single edge The rst aim was reached by optimal smoothing. Canny demonstrated that Gaussian ltering was optimal for his criteria. The second aim is for accuracy. Non-maximum suppression (peak detection) is used for this. It retains all the maximum pixels in a ridge of data resulting in a thin line of edge points. The third aim relates to locating single edge points in response to a change in brightness. This requires getting a rst derivative normal to the edge, which should be maximum at the peak of the edge data where the gradient of the original image is sharpest. Calculating this normal is usually considered too dicult and the actual implementation of the edge detection is as follows in gure 6.1.

Figure 6.1: Canny Edge Detection Process

22

CHAPTER 6. THEORY

Non maximal suppression

This essentially locates the highest points in edge magnitude. Given a 3x3 region a point is considered maximum if its value is greater than those either side of it. The points either side of it on the edge are established with the direction information.

Hysteresis Thresholding

Hysteresis thresholding allows pixels near edge to be considered as edges for a lower threshold. If no adjacent pixels are 1 (edge), a high threshold must be met to set a pixel to 1. If there is an adjacent pixel labelled as 1 a lower threshold must be met to set a pixel to 1.

6.3

Distance Transform

Distance transforms are applied to binary feature images, such as those resulting from edge detection. Each pixel is labelled with a number to represent its distance from the nearest feature pixel. The real Euclidean distance to pixels is too expensive to calculate and for most applications an estimate can be used. These include 1-2, 3-4 transforms and other more complicated
4 3 4 3

approximations. A 3-4 transform uses the following distance operator: 1 0 1 This matrix
4 3

shows why the transform is named as such. The diagonals are represented by

4 3 4 3,

and adjacent

distances 3 . Some papers [3, 12, 25] have gone on to prove that approximations were sucient 3 for the purposes of distance matching. The following images show a feature image and its corresponding distance transform. The value of the distance transform increases as the distance is further from a feature pixel in the original image. A simple way to calculate a distance transform is to iterate over a feature image using to distance operator to nd the minimum distance value for each pixel. Set all feature pixels to zero and others to innity before the rst pass. Then for each pixel, on each pass, set it
k1 k1 k1 k1 k1 k1 k as the following value: vi,j = min(vi1,j1 + 4, vi1,j + 3, vi1,j+1 + 4, vi,j1 + 3, vi,j , vi,j+1 + k1 k1 k1 3, vi+1,j+1 + 4, vi+1,j + 3, vi+1,j+1 + 4) Complete sucient passes (k represents the pass number)

6.4. DISTANCE MATCHING

23

0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Feature Image

6 3 0 3 0 3 8 6 3 0 3 6 7 4 3 0 3 6 6 3 0 0 3 6 7 4 3 3 4 7 8 7 6 6 7 8 Figure 6.2: 3-4 Distance Transform (not divided by 3) Distance Transform

until you have calculated the maximum distance that is necessary for implementation of the matching or other algorithm you intend to use. More complicated faster methods exist. Borgefors is responsible for much of the early work on distance transforms. Her two pass algorithm [25] is popular and is used by the Open CV library.

6.4

Distance Matching

Distance matching of a single template on an image is a simple process after a feature extraction and distance transform. One simply scores each position by overlaying the edge data of the template as shown in gure 6.3. The mean distance of the edge pixels to template is then

Figure 6.3: Overlaying of Edge Image [3] calculated with Dchamf er (T, I) =
1 |T |

tT

dI (t) [5] where T and I are the features of the template

and Image respectively, T represents the number of features in T and dI (t) is the distance between the template and image feature. This gives a matching score. The lower the score, the better the match. By completing this process for every image position in the region of interest

24

CHAPTER 6. THEORY

a score is generated for each location. If any of these scores fall below the matching threshold. The template can be considered found. There is one problem with the simple forward distance matching, where the distance transform of the image, is correlated against the feature extraction of the template. If the template is missing features that are present in the image ie. if the template points are a subset of the image points it may score as highly as an exact match. Thus the forward distance matching conrms the presence of template features in the image, but doesnt conrm the presence of image features in the template. The following example (gures 6.4 - 6.6) illustrate how an incorrect match could occur due to these circumstances. The template gure 6.6 is a sub-set of the image and ts the distance transform.

Figure 6.4: Original Image

Figure 6.5: Distance Image

Figure 6.6: Template

6.4. DISTANCE MATCHING

25

6.4.1

Reverse Matching

A reverse match is often used to preclude these false matches. Figure 6.7 demonstrates the relationship between a forward match (Feature Template to DT Image) and a reverse match (DT Template to Feature Image). If we revisit the example that caused errors in forward matching

Figure 6.7: Matching Techniques [4] we can see that its reverse matching score will be signicantly lower. When we combine the forward and reverse match we can use the resulting score to reject or accept matches. When the

Figure 6.8: Template Distance Transform template of the cross is overlayed on this distance transform (Figure 6.8) the score will be high. The only problem is if there are not sucient pixels in the edge image. This should be eliminated by forward matching with a sensible template.

26

CHAPTER 6. THEORY

6.4.2

Oriented Edge Matching

Oriented Edge Matching, and similar techniques, are useful in shape based matching. They further clarify that features in the template are present in the image. Oriented Edge Matching can evaluate to a distance measure between orientations. Templates are then matched with this extra parameter. Each pixel now has a distance from the nearest feature pixel and an orientation distance from the nearest feature pixel. Huttenlocher [1] and Johnson [26] have published papers describing the use of oriented edge matching in an image hierarchy. This orientation match generalised Hausdor Matching to oriented pixels. Their formula for calculating the Hausdor distance took this extra orientation parameter and normalised it to be comparable with the location distance ))) [26, 1] Where: m is the my iy template, mx my represent the x and y coordinates of that pixel, mo the orientation and similar measures. H (M, I) = maxmM (miniI (max( for ix , iy , io of the image. It has the same general form as their denition of a Hausdor measure, therefore can be substituted into a Hausdor matching algorithm. Gavrila et al [5] used a similar technique to increase matching accuracy of chamfer matching. By splitting the features detected from the extraction into types and matching them separately, the chance that you are measure the distance between the same features of the image and template increase. Gavrila suggests having M feature types, thus M templates and M feature images. When using edge points the orientation can be binned into M segments of the unit circle. Thus each template edge point is assigned to one of the M templates. The individual distance measures for each M type can be combined later. mx ix , mo io|

6.4.3

Coarse/Fine Search

A Coarse/Fine Search, or pyramid resolution search is a popular method for increasing the speed of a search based image recognition technique. Generally a coarse ne search involves decreasing the steps of the template search over the image if matching scores dictate. Conversely a pyramid resolution search scales (smaller) the image and template, increasing the scale if the scores are sucient. Though the calculation of the score for each position in a pyramid search requires less computational expense (less pixels), the scaling of the template can

6.4. DISTANCE MATCHING

27

Figure 6.9: Search Expansion create diculties. In a matching scenario such as trac signs, the details of the signs are quiet ne. Hence reducing their size can cause these details to be destroyed. In a distance based search the smooth results (compared to feature to feature matching), mean that a reasonable match at a coarse search level might indicate an exact match at a ner level. If the current resolution of the search is , and the threshold dening a match is . Then when using a distance measure, as in HCM, the current threshold, T , can be set such that a match cannot be missed. Figure 6.9 shows the furthest the actual location (the cross) can be from the search (squares). To not miss this possibility the threshold must be set according to: T = 2 ( )2 . Thus 2

HCM has the excellent property that in a coarse ne search a match cannot be missed.

6.4.4

Hierarchy Search

The approach proposed by Gavrila [4, 5] is to combine a coarse/ne search with a hierarchical search. In this scenario a number of resolution levels is covered concurrently with the levels of the search tree. In this search they use a depth rst tree search. The thresholds can once again be set using a mathematical equation to ensure that templates are not missed. At each point the image is searched with prototype template p, at a particular search step, if the score is below a threshold, Tp , the search is expanded at that point with the children nodes being scored. To ensure that Tp will not reject any possible matches two factors must now be taken into account: the distance between the location of the score, and the furthest possible matching location; and the distance between the prototype template and its children. Thus the threshold for this point of the search is now Tp = 2 ( )2 worstchild. Where worst child = 2

28

CHAPTER 6. THEORY

maxti of C Dp (T, I), where C is the set of children of prototype p C = t1 , . . . , tc ; Once again a match cannot be missed.

6.5

Tree/Hierarchy

The hypothesis of this thesis is to prove that creating a hierarchy of templates will allow the matching process described above to be carried out in real-time on multiple objects. Trees are a specic type of graph fullling certain mathematical properties.

6.5.1

Graph Theory

A graph consists of a non-empty set of elements, called vertices, and a list of unordered pairs of these elements, called edges. [27]

This statement denes a graph. Graphs come in many dierent forms and have numerous properties and denitions associated with them. Only the applicable properties will be discussed here. Adjacency: Vertices, u and v, are said to be adjacent if they are joined by edge, e. u and v are said to be incident with e and correspondingly e is incident with u and v. The vision most people have of graphs is a diagrammatic representation such as gure 6.10. Where points are joined by lines, which are

Figure 6.10: Simple Graph [2] vertices and edges respectively. This is useful for small and simple graphs, but would obviously

6.5. TREE/HIERARCHY

29

be confusing for larger representations. Processing graphs in a computer in this form is also generally inappropriate. It is possible to take each vertex and list those that are adjacent to it in the column or row of a matrix. This form is more suitable to mathematical and computational manipulation. An adjacency matrix is dened as such:

Let G be a graph without loops, with n vertices labelled 1,2,3,,n. The adjacency matrix M(G) is the n x n matrix in which the entry in row i and column j is the number of edges joining the vertices i and j. [27]

A dissimilarity matrix is and adjacency matrix of a weighted directed graph. A weighted graph by denition is a graph to each edge of which has been assigned a positive number, called a weight [27]. In this denition a directed graph refers to a set of vertices with edges that infer adjacency in only one direction. Each edge is weighted with the similarity in that direction. Let G be a weighted, directed graph without loops, with n vertices labelled 1,2,3n. A dissimilarity matrix is the n x n matrix in which the entry in row i and column j is a measure of the dissimilarity between vertices i and j. Another necessary denition ia a complete graph. A complete graph is a graph in which every two distinct vertices are joined by exactly on edge.[27]

6.5.2

Trees

Trees (Figure 6.11) are connected graphs which contain no cycles. Trees were rst used in a modern mathematical context by Kircho during his work on electrical networks during the 1840s, they were revisited during work on chemical models in the 1870s [28]. The signicance of trees has increased in recent years due to modern computers. Increasingly tree structures are being used to store and organise data. Multimedia and Internet based storage and search research is at the cutting edge of tree development. These systems are required to store large amounts of data and search them very quickly. This thesis will create a tree using trac sign templates based on their feature similarity. This tree will then be searched using feature information extracted from an image. Some tree properties can be used to construct trees from graphs. One type of these are called

30

CHAPTER 6. THEORY

minimum spanning trees. There are systematic methods for nding spanning trees from graphs. These are not applicable in this application, because the templates to represent higher levels in the tree are not yet established, creating all combinations of these and nding spanning graphs would be computationally too expensive. An easier approach is to build the tree with a bottomup approach. A bottom-up approach to growing a tree starts with the leaves, or the lowest level of the tree which will have only one edge connected to them. From here the tree is constructed by moving up levels, combining the templates at each level. When creating a tree the programmer/user needs to determine several variables/concepts before commencing. These are the criteria for nding splits, features, the size of the desired tree and tree quality measures.

Figure 6.11: Tree

Finding Splits When building a tree it is necessary to split the data at each node. Finding a split amounts to determining attributes that are useful and creating a decision rule based on these [29]. Trees can be multivariate or univariate. Multivariate trees require combinational features to be evaluated at each node.

Features The features of a tree are usually the attributes used to split the tree. In a simple tree of integers, the features are obviously the value of the number. Values are constant in relation to each other, i.e. ordered, for instance 9 is greater than 7, 10 is greater than 9, therefore also greater than 7. This allows trees to be created easily. Data such as image templates which are not ordered, i.e. image 3 matches image 5 well, image

6.5. TREE/HIERARCHY

31

7 matches image 5 doesnt imply that image 7 matches image 3 more or less, are more dicult to place into trees. Features used to nd splits and create an image tree are in this thesis likely to be distance measures between images.

Size of Trees

Obtaining trees of the correct size can be a complex issue. This will often be application dependant. Shallow trees can be computationally ecient, but deeper trees can be more accurate (note: that is a very general statement). Some techniques for obtaining correctly sized trees exist. These include restrictions on node size, multi-stage searches and thresholds on impurity [29]. Multi-stage searches are perhaps beyond the scope of this thesis. Restrictions on node-size allow the user to control the maximum size of a node. Thresholds on impurity allow only groups/spilts to exist that are above or below a certain value when the splitting criterion is used. A single threshold will not necessarily be possible in most situations, especially considering cases where the sample size can aect necessary thresholds.

Tree Quality measures

Tree quality could depend on size, optimisation of splitting criteria, classication of test cases and testing cost [29]. There are many options for deciding the quality of a tree. A simple method proposed by Gavrila [4, 5] for a distance matching image tree was to minimise the distance between images of the same group and maximising the distance between dierent groups. This should ensure that the images within a group are similar and groups are dissimilar. The eect will be to decrease the threshold used to determine whether to expand a search, resulting in a more ecient search because less paths are tested.

Simulated Annealing

The optimisation technique used by Gavrila [4, 5] to optimise hierarchies (Maximise the tree quality) was simulated annealing. It is a process of stochastic optimisation. The name originates

32

CHAPTER 6. THEORY

from the process of slowly cooling molecules to form a perfect crystal. The cooling process and the search algorithm are iterative procedures controlled by a decreasing parameter. It allows the search to jump out of local minimum by allowing backwards steps. This works on an exponential decay like temperature, where if the backwards change is not too expensive given the current temperature it will be accepted. Searches with simulated annealing can be stopped based on search length, temperature or if no better combination is possible. Simulated Annealing was also used by [10] to recognise objects.

Searching Trees

There are several well-known search methods for trees, two are depth rst search (DFS) and breadth rst search (BFS, gure 6.12). They dier in their direction of search. A DFS works down the tree checking each path to the leaves before moving across. A BFS checks across the tree rst. Gavrila [4, 5] used a depth rst search which requires a list of node locations to visit. A BFS visits all the vertices adjacent to a node before going onto another one, hence would not require this list of locations. A good way to visualise a breadth rst search this is laying the nodes out onto horizontal levels. Every node on the current level must be searched before we can move onto the next level. A depth rst search can be seen as working down the levels before going across. The next level below must be searched before the search can move horizontally to the next template on the same level.

Figure 6.12: Breadth First Search

6.6. PROGRAMMING

33

6.6

Programming

This thesis requires a good knowledge of programming concepts and topics. Algorithms and data structures are important, as are concepts of Object Orientated programming. Specic knowledge of MATLAB, the IPL Image Processing and Open CV libraries is also necessary. Details of these are included in Appendix A.2.

34

CHAPTER 6. THEORY

Chapter 7

Hardware Design and Implementation

The hardware for this thesis should be simple and o the shelf. This proves the value of the IPL and Open CV libraries used. Showing that these libraries allow image processing on a general purpose platform, providing this platform is of a comparatively good standard. Microsoft DirectShow, allows to lter that is built to work on any streaming media source. The two practical medias are:

Video recorded on a digital camera and written to an MPG/AVI. Video streaming from a USB/Fire-wire device Where the video has been pre-recorded the only hardware required is the computer.

Where it is being streamed the camera must be plugged into a port/card on the computer. This will allow Directshow to access the video with a suitable object, Asynchronous File Source and WDM Streaming Capture Device respectively for the two example sources above. No design decisions were required for the hardware. Suitable devices were already available in the laboratory

35

36

CHAPTER 7. HARDWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

Figure 7.1: Block Diagram from GraphEdit

7.1

Camera

In a commercial application a purpose built camera would be used. This thesis used a standard digital camcorder. Several problems are evident with standard camcorders. The automatic settings do not cater for high shutter speeds necessary, forcing manual settings, which are dicult to adjust on the y. Due to the camera being pointed down the road the automatic focus would often blur the trac sign. A purpose built camera would be made to adjust automatically when set at high shutter speeds. It would also be tted with a telephoto lens to allow high resolution at a fair distance from the sign. The focus would be xed to the expected distance of sign detection, or adjusted to focus on the region of interest.

Chapter 8

Software Design and Implementation

All the code for this thesis is included on the CD attached to this document and not as an appendix. The appendix A.12 is simply a listing of directories, les and their contents.

8.1

Hierarchy Creation

The method of hierarchy creation is based on the graph theoretical approach outlined in [2] and the trac sign specic application in [5]. The technique outlined produces a single level hierarchy. It is a bottom-up approach and can be applied recursively with varying thresholds to generate a multilevel approach. The description explains inputs and outputs to most major functions, describes the abstract data types, and shows the procedural design of the functions. Briey, the algorithm involves grouping the images into complete graphs of 2, 3 and 4 vertices. Each complete graph forms a group which can be added to a hierarchy. The hierarchy is constructed taking groups in an arbitrary order based on weightings of group similarities. It is then annealed until further optimisation is not possible. Optimisation is dened as minimising intragroup scores and maximising intergroup scores. The process tests several orders and optimises hierarchy solutions for each of these. The best hierarchy is chosen by the best optimised scores. The features considered in this tree are the image similarities and dissimilarities. These help to nd splits based on thresholding these values. The similarities and dissimilarities are based on distance matching scores between templates. This seems the logical feature in a hierarchy for

37

38

CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

distance matching. The size of the tree has been limited only by restricting node size to lesser the complication of application. The block diagram in gure 8.1 represents the process. This was the initial design.

Figure 8.1: Hierarchy Creation Block Diagram Renements were made to the exact methods of each sub-process during construction, resulting in the following implementation.

8.1.1

Image Acquisition

The owchart in gure 8.2 is the design for the process used. The images used for hierarchy creation were taken from websites of sign distributors. (For other matching applications the images can be generated appropriately.) This allowed quality pictures of signs to be included. Before the process commenced, similar sign types were resized, i.e. all the diamond signs were made to be the same size. Images were then acquired from a directory with a Matlab script. Matlab provides a simple les command to retrieve a list of les from a directory. The list of les is iterated through, checking if the extension is an image (.bmp, .jpg, etc) if so it is loaded and the size tested. This is to nd the maximum image size in the directory. The list is then iterated again zero padding any smaller images to the maximum size found in the last iteration and adding them all into a three dimensional vector. The distance transform of each image can be calculated using chamfer.m.

8.1. HIERARCHY CREATION

39

Figure 8.2: Image Acquisition Flowchart Chamfer.m

The chamfer routine written for template distance transforms was inecient but simple. The time taken for o-line distance transforms is not related to the speed of the matching. Firstly all feature pixels are set to 0, and all non-feature pixels to an eective innity or maximum value greater than the maximum distance to be iterated too. The algorithm iterates over the
k image a certain number of times, each time labelling each pixel with the result of: vi,j = k1 k1 k1 k1 k1 k1 k1 k1 k1 min(vi1,j1 +4, vi1,j +3, vi1,j+1 +4, vi,j1 +3, vi,j , vi,j+1 +3, vi+1,j+1 +4, vi+1,j +3, vi+1,j+1 +4)

After this is complete, values are approximated for corner pixels. This is a very inecient, but simple calculation of the chamfer or distance transform (Figure 8.3).

Dissimilarity Matrix

The dissimilarity matrix was calculated using average chamfer distance Dchamf er (T, I) =
1 |T | tT

dI (t) [5] where T and I are the features of the template and image

respectively, T represents the number of features in T and dI (t) is the distance between the template and image feature. Entry (i,j) in the dissimilarity matrix represents the distance measure between template i and image j. (Both being templates from the database) This

40

CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

Figure 8.3: My Chamfer Transform initialisation script is called createTree.m Inputs:

(optional) directory

Output:

dissimilarity matrix Images (MATLAB structure with elds edgedata, chamdata)

From this point on in the software each image is referred to by its position in the images struct. These positions were allocated by the order les were retrieved from MATLABs les structure.

8.2

Group Creation

A Design Diagram is shown in gure 8.4. Groups were created by nding complete graphs within the set of images. The graph of images was represented by an adjacency matrix. The adjacency matrix was formed by thresholding the dissimilarity matrix. All values below the maximum distance are set to 1 indicating the images are similar (adjacent given this threshold). This was eectively setting a threshold on impurity to control the properties of the tree.

8.2. GROUP CREATION

41

Figure 8.4: Group Creation Block Diagram Using the properties of adjacency matrices complete graphs of pairs can be found from the diagonal of the adjacency matrix squared. The adjacency matrix can be searched to nd the product terms contributing to the entries. The pairs found are used to nd complete graphs of triplets. This also requires the adjacency matrix to be cubed. Once again the diagonal shows if a triplet is present. The pairs can be used to nd the third image. Then in the same way triplets are used to nd the quads. Eectively all the closed walks of length 2, 3 and 4 through the connected sub-graphs of the set of images have been found. By using the adjacency matrix, instead of the unthresholded dissimilarity matrix to create these groups we ensure any similarities are of sucient quality.

8.2.1

Finding groups - setup.m

The MATLAB script for nding the groups, setup.m, is specied as follows: Input: Dissimilarity Matrix Images (structure with elds edgedata and chamdata) THRES a threshold of the average chamfer distance

42

CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

Output: Imagestruct (structure with many elds representing groups and their intergroup and intragroup scores) Adjsquare (the square of the adjacency matrix)

8.2.2

Score Calculation - createtemps.m

The scores referred to in the previous list are calculated by createtemps.m. Intragroup scores are found by testing all the templates in a group against their combinational template distance transform. The combinational templates are formed using the createtemps script by creating a distance transform that is the mean of the images distance transforms. The worst (maximum) score of the templates against combinational template, is the intragroup score. Thus each group is scored by how badly it matches its template. Intergroup scores are calculated by comparing a combinational template to all the images not included in that template. The minimum score is taken to be the intragroup score because it represents the best match. The goal is to reduce the intergroup similarity, hence make the best match (minimum) as bad as possible. The scores of similarity and dissimilarity are calculated using distance matching because this is the method of matching to be used.

Createtemps.m The createmps script, as already mentioned, creates a combinational template. The arguments are as follows: Input: Image Number for root image. Vector of Image Numbers for all in group. Images - the structure containing all the image data.

Output:

8.2. GROUP CREATION

43

temps - the structure containing the template data (distance and edge) and scores Tempscore - the template intergscore

The combinational template is later thresholded to create the feature template for this possible tree node. It is morphologically thinned to ensure that all lines are of single width. This process reveals the common features of the template. It should ensure that combinational templates are subsets (or close to) of the templates. Thus as explained when discussing reverse matching they match as well as the actual templates. The templates are not saved at this time simply the scores. If all templates for each group were saved the memory necessary would start to become ridiculously large. The scores are stored, and templates recreated later.

8.2.3

Hierarchy Creation

An arbitrary order is used to guide the initial selection of the groups. Firstly, iterate through the order to nd the highest scoring match that will t into the hierarchy for each image not already included (ndbestnotin.m, a recursive implementation see gure A.2). Once this has been completed all images with no possible groups, or those that havent already been included are added as single images. The features being used to create and optimise the hierarchy are the group size, intergroup and intragroup scores. Once the hierarchy is nished the groups scores and added together to form a hierarchy score. The hierarchy has two scores, one to represent the intragroup scores, and one for the intergroup scores. These scores are a measure of hierarchy quality. The owchart (Figure 8.5 shows the procedural design of the script. Hierarchy Creation is performed by the MATLAB script createhier.m. Inputs:

allpairs (vector containing all pairs already in hierarchy) Imagestruct (same as before) Order (arbitrary order of construction)

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CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

Figure 8.5: Hierarchy Creation Flowchart Hierarchy (the existing hierarchy, if partially built) NOIMAGES (number of images)

Outputs:

hierarchy (structure with groups, scores and intergroup scores) Scorevect (the cumulative totals for inter and intra group scores)

8.2.4

Hierarchy Optimisation

The hierarchies are optimised with a simple method similar to the simulated annealing used by Gavrila [4, 5]. In this case it has been greatly simplied due to limited understanding of the mathematical concepts and time restraints. The quality of the trees is measured by the similarity of images within a group (intragroup scores) and their dissimilarity to other groups (intergroup scores). A group is not allowed to be removed if it has no pairs, it has already been removed or the last step was backwards. If the resulting hierarchy has a better score, it is kept and the annealing process is continued. To avoid local minima the optimisation is allowed to take one step backwards, to a higher score, if the next score is then lower than the previous best the change is accepted, otherwise the annealing process is nished. Backwards steps are not dependant on a temperature factor.

8.2. GROUP CREATION

45

This optimisation takes place in the combinegroups.m script. The optimisation is attempted for a variety of orders. The hierarchy is created for each order using createhier.m, it is then optimised with the anneal function. The anneal function calls the remove function each pass. This is all represented by the owcharts in gures 8.6, A.4 and A.3. This is done for multiple arbitrary orders to show the eectiveness of the optimisation. For

Figure 8.6: combinegroups.m Flowchart the best hierarchy the templates are regenerated, as only template scores were saved the rst time they were created.

8.2.5

Multi-Level Hierarchy

To create a multi-level hierarchy the same functions are applied to the templates resulting from the combination of the leaf level images. A script temps2images.m was programmed to automate the creation of multilevel hierarchies. Alternatively if all the template images are written to les they can be accessed with createTree to form another hierarchy.

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CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

8.2.6

Final Implementation

The nal implementation has been submitted with this thesis. To use this bottom-up hierarchy creation, you must recursively apply it to each level of the hierarchy.

1. Place the image les into the same directory. 2. Run the createtree script (edited to use that directory) to get the images and dissimilarity matrix into the workspace. 3. Use setup1 to create the groups that are used to optimise the hierarchy. 4. Run combinegroups to combine and optimise these groups into a hierarchy. Combinegroups will show you each group, and output as les the images of the combinational templates. They will be named based on the number of root of each group. 5. Repeat this on the combinational templates for the next hierarchy level and so on.

Note: The algorithm is written recursively to make it easy (not ecient), which means it will fail if there are too many groups. Which happens if your threshold is too low, or there are too many images.

8.3

MATLAB Prototype Matching

A prototype matching system was created in MATLAB to help understand and rene the algorithm, in an easy development environment. It was always destined to be slow and unusable, even on static images. The basic chamfer matching algorithm was implemented using simple forward and reverse matching. This helped to rene several techniques and test possible approaches to speeding up the matching process. The nal MATLAB matching system was dierent than the eventual Visual C++ real-time system, but was an excellent learning experience. The rst approach taken was a simple distance match of one template to images, involving both forward and reverse matching. This template could then be selected to test varying combinations of template and image. This led to the notion of masking the reverse search to avoid non-sign details aecting the match.

8.3. MATLAB PROTOTYPE MATCHING

47

Figure 8.7: Simple Matching System Eective matching was stied greatly by trees. Simple colour detection and subsequent masking of the edge detection image by the colour information was tried. The thesis was not meant use colour information, due to previous work proving it to be unreliable, so this approach was discontinued. Further methods tried to improve the matching included Localised thresholding, sub-sampling of the edge detection and oriented edge detection. Oriented edge detection did not remove the trees as possible matches but increased their random appearance when compared to the well directed outline of trac signs. They still caused unnecessary expansion of the search, but at a ne level helped reduce false matching. Localised thresholding (A.5.1)used simple statistical methods, rst encountered during ELEC4600 to increase the threshold in areas with high edge content. This was an attempt to reduce detail in areas of trees. Dierent thresholds (A.5.2) were also tried for dierent levels of the search. Sub-sampling (A.5.3)of the edge detection also attempted to remove the tree data.

8.3.1

Basic System

The design of the basic ne/coarse single template distance matching system in MATLAB is as follows (Figure 8.7):

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CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

R10simplepyroverlay.m

This le implements the design in gure 8.7. As shown it takes a recursive approach to searching each of the starting locations, which are iterated over. After the initialisation of variables the iterative for loop steps through each of the starting positions separated by 8 pixels vertically and horizontally. This location is passed to a recursive loop, named expand, which searches this sub-area. For each search position based on the step a forward score is calculated. If this forward score is below a threshold, the search is expanded further on this location, by recurring with a smaller step, else the search is terminated. Following the theory relating to coarse ne distance matching the threshold is reduced as a function of the step. If the step is one a reverse and forward score is computed for both locations. If there were sucient pixels in the edge image to indicate a sensible reverse match and the product of the forward and reverse threshold a match is considered to be found. If these conditions are not met the search is terminated without a match being found.

8.3.2

Masking Reverse Search

This simple search was improved by masking the reverse search. The reverse search is only appropriate for areas included within the boundaries of a sign. For example if a sign is surrounded by Trees the edge detection may look as in gure 8.8. Setting the region of interest to the square

Figure 8.8: Noise Behind Sign shape of the matrix will cause the tree edge detection to inate the reverse score. By masking the edge detection with gure 8.9. The region of interest is changed to include solely inside the boundaries of the sign. Ensuring the only features considered are those of the sign, not the background. This matched individual templates well. The search still expanded unnecessarily on areas of noise, like trees, and gave some false matches.

8.3. MATLAB PROTOTYPE MATCHING

49

Figure 8.9: Reverse Matching Mask

8.3.3

Pyramid Search

This pyramid search used the hierarchy object created by the MATLAB script described in the previous section. This implementation is much more complicated than the simple search as the hierarchy must be searched concurrently with the coarse/ne matching. The following design (Figure 8.10) was used to search each group for a match:

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CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

Figure 8.10: Pyramid Search

8.3. MATLAB PROTOTYPE MATCHING

51

It was implemented in pyroverlay.m and was a simple iteration through each member of the group. Another function simply called each group. Work on the pyramid search was very brief due to the poor results of the simple one template ne coarse search. Renements were need to the matching design to improve accuracy and precision.

Oriented Edge Detection

Oriented edge detection has been used by other researchers in matching problems, including hierarchical searches, so the expectations were high. The planned implementation was to modify the existing canny edge detection algorithm in MATLAB to produce a binned orientation map. The canny edge detector already estimates the direction of edges for use in the non-maximal suppression. By binning the values during this calculation the output from the canny edge detector could be scaled with dierent magnitudes representing orientations. Directions are binned based on the following diagram:

% % % % % % % % % % 3 2

The X marks the pixel in question, and each of the quadrants for the gradient vector fall into two cases, divided by the 45 degree line. In one case the gradient

O----0----0 4 | | O | (1)| X | 1 | O | |(4)

vector is more horizontal, and in the other it is more vertical. There are eight

divisions, but for the non-maximum supression we are only worried about 4 of them since we use symmetric points about the center pixel.

O----O----O (2) (3)

(From MATLAB image processing toolbox edge function)

The edge function iterates over the directions, nding the maximums for each. The edge pixels for each direction are placed in another matrix (three dimensional) directionmatrix. Shown in A.4.1 is the section of code changed. I can then output a matrix with edges directionally coded into the magnitude (Figure 8.11).

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CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

Figure 8.11: Oriented Edge Detection

8.3.4

Directional Matching

To match the oriented edge detection to the template requires a oriented edge map of the template. By extending the distance transform to produce a matrix labelling every position with the direction of the closest template feature pixel allows a comparison of the distance between image and template pixels and a distance between their direction. Directionchamfer.m was the script to perform this function, after calculating the result of the minimum distance (split into positions which have 4 added to them and 3), a position then inherited the direction of the pixel that its minimum distance was calculated from. The code in
k1 A.4.2 was iterated over the template image. Equating the following: diri,j = dir(min(vi1,j1 + k1 k1 k1 k1 k1 k1 k1 k1 4, vi1,j + 3, vi1,j+1 + 4, vi,j1 + 3, vi,j , vi,j+1 + 3, vi+1,j+1 + 4, vi+1,j + 3, vi+1,j+1 + 4)) Results

of this for the image shown in gure 8.11 are shown in gure 8.12. This was too expensive to perform on the entire image, so it was only implemented for forward matching against the distance transform of the template. A more ecient distance transform method may have been possible, but as this was a prototype implementation designed to test the algorithm it was not attempted. The oriented distance matching was implemented for single image coarse ne matching. The script written was simplepyrdirectedoverly.m. Positions were expanded based on the forward matching as before, but conrmation of matches used the forward, reverse and orientation matching scores. This rejected almost all of the false matches, allowing the results presented in my thesis seminar.

8.3. MATLAB PROTOTYPE MATCHING

53

Figure 8.12: Orientation Map The orientation matching score was calculated using the following formula: For every pixel in the directed edge image subtract the value of the corresponding pixel in the direction map then Mod that with three. This results in the following scores:

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CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

Edge Score 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 etc...

Orientation Map 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Matching Score 0 1 2 1 1 0 1 2

Table 8.1: Directional Scoring

8.3. MATLAB PROTOTYPE MATCHING

55

8.3.5

Rejected Renements

Some rejected renements to the system are present in Appendix A.5.

8.3.6

Final Implementation

A nal implementation for the MATLAB prototype Matching was not delivered. The work was always intended to aid in understanding of the Algorithm. The work was left unnished and implementation of the real-time system was started.

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8.4

Real-Time

The design for the real-time implementation would reect the properties of the matching algorithm discovered in the prototype implementation. The basic forward and reverse matching design would be implemented rst. If additional accuracy proved necessary this could be expanded to include orientation matching. The procedural diagram of the matching algorithm, based on the prototyping, to be implemented was as gure 8.10.

8.4.1

Matching Process

Figure 8.10 shows the initial procedural design for the matching algorithm simplied to the main processes. Each template root is forward scored against positions. Based on this score the position is expanded to include sub-positions. If the matching reaches the minimum step the hierarchy search is enacted. This will search the children of each root, expanding on the best match above the threshold. If the leaf level of the tree is reached, a reverse match is calculated conrming the presence. Reverse matching cannot be used until the leaf level of the matching process because combinational templates may not include every feature of the leaf template they represent. They only contain the common features of their leaves.

8.4.2

Object Oriented Design

The system was designed in an object oriented environment. Hence Object Oriented design concepts were used. The following initial design (Figure 8.13) was established prior to implementation. These intended designs are the ideal situation where the search is handled within the template classes. An abstract builder pattern is used to create the trees. The class diagram (Figure 8.13) shows the main classes and their main features important to the matching algorithm. The EZrgb24 class contains the image data. This includes the edge image, distance image and the output image. The transform method is part of the original example code. It is executed on each frame, and is where the edge detection and distance transform will be eected. EZrgb24

8.4. REAL-TIME

57

Figure 8.13: Intended Class Diagram will also write the output to the stream. The mytree class is an abstract builder. It has subclasses that are concrete builders, actual implementations. The mytree class allows the polymorphism to be used. Any of the concrete builders can be implemented at run-time, and can use the same interface. The builders are invoked to create the tree of templates. The constructor creates the mytemplatev objects in the appropriate hierarchy. It allows other classes access to the hierarchy through the array of root templates. The mytemplatev class contains and operate on the template data. It has methods to score and search through the image hierarchy. Each template contains its distance and edge data and a pointer to its array of children. Their are methods for EZrgb24 to access the data.

Sequence Diagram

The sequence diagram gure (A.7) shows the ow of control between process and objects. This design is simplied due to my limited knowledge of UML. The EZrgb24 object is responsible for creating the IplImage objects to represent the images. It

58

CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

also creates a mytree object and instantiates it with whichever tree is necessary for the matching task. This builder class creates the template hierarchy. For each frame the transform method is executed. This (not shown in diagram) allocates the images with the calculated edge and distance transforms. For each position to be search, transform runs the hierarchy search. The template class then takes care of forward and reverse scoring appropriately through the hierarchy (not shown in detail). Scores and details of the found image are returned to the Ezrgb24 object to be written to the output. This design allows the template details to be completely hidden from the EZrgb24 object by encapsulation within the mytemplatev object, until a match is found. Obviously at the completion of each frame the transform lter will be run again. (Not Shown in diagram.)

8.4.3

Actual Design

By reverse engineering the code actually written I am able to present the actual design implemented. The class diagram A.8 of the actual implementation shows that the EZrgb24 class has responsibility for most of the scoring and searching methods. The mytemplatev class has almost become an abstract data type. This change in design was necessary during the programming of the thesis. The IplImage objects require careful maintenance to prevent memory leaks. It was much simpler to keep all references and use of this data within the transform method and not pass it to the template objects, even as a reference to a static attribute. Reverse scoring is still run in this method, but memory deallocation cannot be properly controlled without causing errors. Due to the limited nature of reverse scoring this memory leak is allowed to continue to demonstrate the intended design. As can be seen, this design does not merge the coarse/ne search into the hierarchy search. If this were included as indicated in the theory, the threshold must be constantly modied by step and template to combination template parameters. Separating the searches simplied the programming task. If the results were poor, it could have been added later. The classes have also become too big. Ideally in object oriented design the analysis phase should ensure that the classes are minimal and do not implement too much functionality. The basics of tree building are kept the same in this design. The diagram also shows more of the

8.4. REAL-TIME

59

implementation details ie. private variables, but without showing all the private methods needed.

Sequence Diagram The sequence diagram A.9 reects these changes made to the class diagram. It can be easily seen it is overcomplicated, and control resides mainly within the transform lter. Firstly a coarse/ne search is executed with the root templates at each position. This forward searches the root templates until the step is one. This may be expanded to the hierarchical search based on the scores. At the leaf nodes a reverse search is executed. The output is written similar to before. The function is greatly simplied because the transform method knows which template matches (because it generated the scores).

8.4.4

Further Information

Appendix A.7 explains in more detail how some dicult parts of the implementation were achieved.

8.4.5

Enhancements/Renements

The following enhancements and renements were implemented on the real-time system: Spiralling out from the centre of the ROI Temporal Filtering to remove trees Oriented Edges Expanding all possibilities or best Reverse Scoring Truncating the Distance Transform

These are explained in detail in Appendix A.8

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CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

8.4.6

Final Matching Algorithm Used.

The nal matching algorithm implemented used the maximum, truncated and scaled distance matching approaches. Only the best match at each level of the hierarchy was expanded. Oriented edge detection was not fully implemented in the real-time environment as match accuracy was reasonable. Temporal ltering was also unnecessary. The spiral search pattern was rejected as the matching may need to nd multiple objects, due to false matches.

8.4.7

Further Examples

Some further examples were programmed to prove the possibilities of the matching algorithm.

Letter Matching Size Variance Matching Deformable Contour Matching

Letter Matching

Many of the improvements mentioned were discovered by using a simplied matching case, that of letters. Trac sign footage contains many uncontrollable variables, such as lighting, occlusions, trees, damage, car movements. By creating a hierarchy of letters, the matching can be demonstrated and tested in real-time in the lab. The hierarchy works on text of a known font, creating the templates using bitmaps of the letters, and providing the letter images, by printed out copies, in a very large font. The hierarchy is interchangeable with the trac sign hierarchy thanks to polymorphism. This system allowed the results of many of the renements to be tested. And some of the renements/bugs were discovered by preparing this easier case.

Size Variance Matching

Hierarchical chamfer matching can be employed to create a size variant matching system. By creating a hierarchy of dierently sized objects they can all be searched for simultaneously.

8.4. REAL-TIME

61

The hierarchy is generally formed by grouping similarly sized objects, for example (Figure A.1. In this application, where masking of the reverse search is used, this would also require a dierent mask for each template, instead of dierent masks for subtrees (circle, diamond, etc...). Due to this added complication, the example application realised used simple circles on a plain background.

Figure 8.14: My Size Variant Hierarchy

Rotational Matching

Another possible scenario, as already mentioned, are rotations of objects. Most rotations bare a similarity to the previous and next rotation. By exploiting this, a hierarchy can be created of similar rotational shapes.

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CHAPTER 8. SOFTWARE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

Chapter 9

Results
9.1 Hierarchy Creation

The hierarchy creation code could successfully optimise small hierarchies. When given a relatively low threshold, the results were not aected by the order of images therefore were optimised. If the threshold was high, the results were the same for groups of similar orders. The creation system was designed around recursive programming. This allowed problems to be simplied, however, it did not create an ecient system. Due to memory constraints large hierarchies and those with many combinations (i.e. low threshold) should be avoided.

9.1.1

Hierarchies

Selected results generated by the hierarchy creation are included.

Diamond Signs The hierarchy included in A.9.1 is of a sub-set of diamond sign templates to demonstrate the eectiveness of the automated hierarchy creation. The following commands were used: 63

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CHAPTER 9. RESULTS

[diss, images]= createTree;

[imagestruct, adjsquare]= setup1(diss, images, 0.5);

[hierarchy, temps, options] = combinegroups(images, imagestruct, 0.5, adjsquare);

The scores achieved by each order before optimisation are presented in gure A.14. After optimisation it can be seen (gure A.15) that groups with similar starting orders have given the same score, hence some optimisation has been achieved.

Circular Signs

A Hierarchy of Circular signs was generated in a similar manner. The following gure represents the hierarchy created. The scores achieved are represented in gure A.36. They demonstrate

Figure 9.1: Circular Sign Hierarchy an optimal solution has probably been achieved, because no matter what order the hierarchy was created in the result was the same.

Others

Hierarchies for letters, multi-resolution and deformable contours are not included due to size restrictions on this document.

9.2. MATLAB MATCHING

65

9.2

Matlab Matching

The basic system of single template matching has limited possibilities. It produced similar scores for an exact match as it did for noise-like patterns created by the edge detection of trees. The addition of reverse matching had limited success. Using a Hierarchical search in this situation did not improve the matching. The rst major improvement to matching accuracy was made by the masking of reverse scoring (8.3.2). This rened the sign matching but still allowed unnecessary search expansion. Localised thresholding as a means to limit unnecessary expansion of the search, proved computationally expensive (Figure A.6). So did matching in dierent feature extractions. Using additional oriented edge information, increased the accuracy and precision of the match. There was only a slight increase in computational expense, due to the exploitation of the canny edge detection. This still did not limit the searchs tendency to expand in places that contained dense edge information, such as trees.

9.2.1

Matlab Matching Results

The diagrams in A.10 detail the results achieved in the MATLAB matching prototype. Which was able to match signs in static images.

9.3

Real-Time Matching

The results presented on trac sign detection show that a real-time detection system based on Hierarchical Chamfer Matching built for a general purpose platform is a realistic goal. The development of the algorithm provided some insights into valuable enhancements. The ideas rejected include the spiral search pattern, simple temporal ltering, and expanding all matches below the threshold. The use of truncated distances was retained. Oriented edge were not implemented but results indicate that this or another stage may still be necessary for match verication. The matching algorithm is intolerant to poor edge detection. In much of the footage recorded

66

CHAPTER 9. RESULTS

the sign is blurred as it nears the correct size for matching, probably due to automatic focussing of the camera. This blurring reduces the quality of the edge detection, which means features are missing from the image and a good forward match is not possible. In other examples, such as letter matching, the results are much better due to the controlled environment.

9.3.1

Performance

On a 1.6Ghz Pentium 4 with 256 Meg of RAM the frame rates varied bfrom over 20 frames/second in scenes were there was little noise to cause unnecessary expansion, to under 10 frames a second for more dicult scenes. These results were on video that was 360 288 pixels.

9.3.2

Results

Virtually all trac signs that were edge detected without distortion were found. False matches were infrequent and limited to noisy sections. The images here (gures 9.2 and 9.3) show the system output. The biggest problem aecting matching was the poor edge detection resulting from blurred footage.

Figure 9.2: 50 Sign

9.3. REAL-TIME MATCHING

67

Figure 9.3: 60 Sign

9.3.3

Letter Matching

A hierarchy was created using the alphabet in a known font. This further demonstrated hierarchical matching. Results proved that print-outs of letters could be matched when held in front of a USB camera, with virtually no false matches in an oce environment. This was once again in real-time.

9.3.4

Size Variant Matching

The demonstration of matching over 20 dierent sized circles, at a high frame rate, has shown that this algorithm could be suitable for matching an object of unknown size. By creating a size hierarchy, then using an object type hierarchy a very large number of shapes and sizes could be recognised.

9.3.5

Rotational Matching

A simple cross pattern was sampled at varying rotations and placed into a hierarchy. This demonstrated the algorithms ability to match rotations of objects. By combining rotations with scaling and skews in a large hierarchy, a very robust detection system would be possible.

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CHAPTER 9. RESULTS

9.4
9.4.1

My Performance
Skills Learnt

During the course of this thesis I have learnt many new skills. These included graph theory, image processing and object oriented programming. I learnt several graph theory concepts and the basics of constructing a tree. I greatly expanded my mathematical knowledge of image processing, particularly edge detection, distance transforms and matching metrics. My Visual C++ programming skills were improved due to the complicated nature of the matching algorithm. I also benetted from investigating the OpenCV library in great detail.

9.4.2

Strengths/Weaknesses

My main weakness was object orientated design and the ability to realise that design. I was unable to build a well structured program. With the knowledge gained during the thesis I could perform much better if the application were to be programmed again. My strength is knowledge, experience and understanding of Image Processing Algorithms. This allows me to quickly evaluate possible approaches based on results of prototyping.

Chapter 10

Future Development
Several aspects of this thesis could be improved if future work was conducted.

More consistent video footage Temporal Information included Better Object Oriented Design Improved Hierarchy Generation Optimisation Final verication stage

10.1

Video Footage

The xation of a camera to the vehicle and the use of a more suitable camera would increase the consistency of footage. A clearer image would allow better edge detection and therefore better matching.

69

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CHAPTER 10. FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

10.2

Temporal Information

The use of temporal information in the application would increase the quality and speed of matching. Tracking of potential signs from frame to frame and use of the expected paths of trac signs could help to speed up matching by pin-pointing likely locations.

10.3

Better OO Design

If the design were more complete and could be eectively realised, the quality of code may be increased. This would not necessarily make it faster, but would increase the readability. Design methods for speed of applications in the environment should be studied further.

10.4

Improved Hierarchy Generation

If the MATLABtm system was able to handle larger image databases, and automatically generate the concrete builder in c++/pseudocode the application would be easier for developers to use. Changes in hierarchy would be simpler. Larger hierarchies could also be created.

10.5

Optimisation

After the design was improved and the code simplied eort could be spent improving the eciency. A faster application would allow larger hierarchies and hence more robust matching. Further improvements would be possible if unnecessary expansion caused by noise, such as trees, could be stopped.

10.6

Final Verication Stage

A nal verication stage such as using orientation information (similar to the MATLAB prototype), colour or neural network stage [4, 5].

Chapter 11

Conclusions
This thesis proved that the hierarchical distance matching algorithm is eective for many image processing scenarios, in particular trac sign recognition. It is worthy of further investigation and development. The trac sign matching application developed has proven that smart vehicle systems are not far away from mass production. The goals of the thesis were achieved. A hierarchy creation system was implemented in MATLAB. The matching was then prototyped, again in MATLAB. This allowed various parameters and properties of the metric to be explored. A real-time matching application was built utilising the IPL Image Processing and OpenCV libraries. It was also expanded to other matching scenarios. The hierarchy creation system that has been developed will create and optimise a structure. It uses graph theory concepts derived from [2]. The output of this can be used in both the static and real-time matching systems. A simple static matching system was developed to prototype the algorithm outlined in [4] and [5]. It is incomplete but matches single templates on images with high accuracy yet poor time performance. The real-time system is dependant on quality video footage, but can produce excellent results. It is capable of recognition up to 20 frames per second. Very few false matches are detected. This document contains the assumptions and a brief specication of the recognition system. Relevant literature has been reviewed to provide theoretical basis for this thesis. Implementation and design details of both hardware and software are included. As are results, recommendations 71

72

CHAPTER 11. CONCLUSIONS

for future work and conclusions.

Chapter 12

Publication
Extract from article to be published in UQ News on the 20th of October.

12.1

Australias Innovators Of The Future

Craig Northways Real-Time Trac Sign Recognition project is based on the work of Daimler Chrysler Research, which hopes to develop Smart Cars that avoid pedestrians and remind you of the speed limits. If the project is developed further, vehicles could soon have the ability to warn drivers of pending situations or automatically take evasion action. Craigs supervisor Associate Professor Brian Lovell said he hopes the device will become marketable. It involves the use of a camera mounted in the car. A computer processes the information into (sic) real time, he said. He also told how the project would be demonstrated at a transport mission in Ireland later in the year.

73

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CHAPTER 12. PUBLICATION

Bibliography
[1] C. Olson and D. Huttenlocher, Automatic target recognition by matching oriented edge pixels, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 103113, 1997. [2] S. Aksoy and R. M. Haralick, Graph-Theoretic Clustering for Image Grouping and Retrieval, IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 1999. [3] G. Borgefors., Hierarchical chamfer matching: A parametric edge matching algorithm, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 10, pp. 849865, 1988. [4] D. M. Gavrila, Multi-feature hierarchical template matching using distance transforms, In Proc. of the International Conference on Pattern Recognition, pp. 439444, 1998. [5] D. Gavrila and V. Philomin, Real-time object detection for smart vehicles, In International Conference on Computer Vision,, pp. 8793, 1999. [6] G. P. et. al, Robust method for road sign detection and recognition, Image and Vision Computing, vol. 14, pp. 109223, 1996. [7] J. Logemann, Realtime trac sign recognition. Web Site, last viewed on 30/03/02. [8] J. M. et al, An active vision system for real-time trac sign recognition, 2000. [9] G. Saligan and D. H. Ballard, Visual routines for autonomouis driving, 1998. [10] M. Betke and N. C. Markis, Fast Object Recognition in Noisy Images using Simulated Annealing, 1993.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

[11] D. Rogahn, Road sign detection and recognition. Web Site, last viewed on 23/03/02, 2000. [12] P. Dhanaraks and N. Covavisaruch, PLANAR IMAGE MOSAICING BY HIERARCHICAL CHAMFER MATCHING ALGORITHM, 1998. [13] G. K. D. Huttenlocher and W. Rucklidge, Comparing images using the hausdor distance, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 15, pp. 850863, 1993. [14] W. Rucklidge, Locating objects using the hausdor distance, In Proc. of the International Conference on Computer Vision, pp. 457464, 1995. [15] C. Olson, A probabilistic formulation for hausdor matching, In Proc. of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 1998. [16] S. Lu and A. Szeto, Hierarchical Articial Neural Networks for Edge Enhancement, Pattern Recognition, vol. 26, no. 8, pp. 427435, 1993. [17] P. S. E. O. M. Oren, C. Papageorgiou and T. Poggio, Pedestrian detection using wavelet templates, In Proc. of the IEEE Conference on ComputerVision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 193199, 1997. [18] R.-L. H. M. A.-M. A. K. Jain, Face Detection in Color Images, 2001. [19] Estevez and Kehtarnavaz, A real-time histographic approach to road sign recognition, Proceedings of the IEEE Southwest Symposium on Image Analysis and Interpretation, 1996. [20] Q. Iqbal and J. K. Aggarwal, Perceptual Grouping for Image Retrieval and Classication, Third IEEE Computer Society Workshop on Perceptual Organization in Computer Vision (POCV01), pp. 191194, 2001. [21] R. Turcajova and J. Katsky, A hierarchical multiresolution technique for image registration, 1995. [22] E. C. H. Jr. and F. King Sun, A non-parametric positioning procedure for pattern classication, IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 7, pp. 614624, 1969.

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[23] R. Z. Jing Huang, S Ravi Kumar, An Automatic Hierarchical Image Classication Scheme, 1999. [24] S. K. M. Abdel-Mottaleb, Hierarchical clustering algorithm for fast image retrieval, Part of the IS and T SPIE Conference on Storage and Retrieval for Image and Video Databases VII, pp. 427435, 1999. [25] G. Borgefors, Distance transforms in digital images, Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing, vol. 34, pp. 344371, 1986. [26] A. E. Johnson and M. Hebert, Recognzing objects by matchin oriented points, IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, CVPR 97, 1997. [27] R. J. Wilson and J. J. Watkins, Graphs An Introductory Approach. John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1990. [28] W. K. Grassmann and J. paul Tremblay, Logic and Discrete Mathematics. Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1990. [29] K. Venkata and S. Murthy, On Growing Better Decision Trees from Data. PhD thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 1997.

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Appendix A

A.1
A.1.1

Assumptions
Speed

The camera must be able to resolve a sharp image from a fast moving vehicle. For demonstration purposes footage can be taken from a slow moving vehicle. This can prove the potential of the algorithm. In a smart vehicle system the camera must be able to resolve images at speeds of up to 110km/h.

A.1.2

Lighting

The lighting during the lming should be reasonable, such that once again the camera can resolve the image. Once again in a smart vehicle system a high quality camera capable of low light lming would be used. Due to the reective nature of trac signs, detection can be performed at night using this method [4, 5].

A.1.3

Position

It is reasonable to assume that the trac signs consistently appear in a similar region of the video footage. If the camera was mounted on the dash of a vehicle, the signs would tend to pass through the same area of the footage (Upper Left in Australia).

79

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APPENDIX A.

A.1.4

Angle

The relative angle between the car and the sign is close to perpendicular. If the car were in an extreme right lane, the image of the sign would be skewed severely. The HCM algorithm is unable to rectify this situation, without incorporating these skewed images into the hierarchy.

A.1.5

Damage

Signs must be assumed to be undamaged. Signs that have suered damage may be bent, twisted or missing sections. Small amounts of damage should not aect the matching. It is fair to assume that most signs are relatively undamaged, as they are regularly maintained by local governments.

A.1.6

Size

Invariance Due to the Size invariant nature of the algorithm it must be assumed that the signs pass through this size(s) as the car approaches them without being obscured. In the Daimler Chrysler system [4, 5] sign templates are two sizes, reducing the chance of them being missed.

Figure A.1: Multi-Resolution Hierarchy [4]

A.1. ASSUMPTIONS

81

A.1.7

Computer Vision Functions

The following assumption relates to the Computer Vision functions present in the IPL and Open CV libraries. The Edge Detection should give a reliable single line outline of the signs. If the functions are correct they should be able to produce an edge detection of the signs in most circumstances based on set thresholds providing the video meets the previous assumptions.

A.1.8

Objects

One major assumption must be made about the shapes to be detected. For HCM to be eective the shape of the objects should be similar. Trac signs full this assumption, as there are a limited number of signs that are easily grouped into basic outline shapes. For example a hierarchy of fruits and vegetables might be unsuccessful. The comparative shapes of bananas, oranges and potatoes are dissimilar. Even within one type of fruit, such as bananas there is sucient variation with similarities to create a hierarchy of bananas alone. Thus Trac signs, text of known font, car outlines, are predictable shaped similar objects suitable for HCM.

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APPENDIX A.

A.2
A.2.1

Programming
MATLAB

MATLAB will not be new to most electrical engineers. It is a numerical mathematics package, able to be programmed using m-les in language similar to C or Java. It can be compiled at run-time or pre-compiled into dlls. It is untyped allowing fast prototyping of algorithms, but not with sucient structure or speed for extensive programming.

A.2.2

Direct Show

Direct show is Microsofts architecture for streaming media. In this system streams originate, are operated on and end in lters. Filters are joined by COM objects. A graph of lters is created. This could be hard coded or, by using an application from the SDK, designed graphically. Filter graphs start with a source, e.g. File Source, USB Camera, TV tuner, are operated on by lters such as splitters, decompressors etc.. and displayed by renderers or written to les by writers. For more information see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/default.asp

A.2.3

IPL Image Processing Library

The IPL Image Processing library was created by Intel to use their extended MMX instruction set. This uses SIMD instruction sets to perform ecient operations on media such as audio and video. SIMD stands for single instruction multiple data and is advantageous in situations where recurring operations are made to large amounts of data such as in signal processing. This has since been discontinued as a free download. For more information see: http://www.intel.com/software/products/perib/ijl/index.htm

A.2.4

Open CV

The open source computer vision library is available free of charge for research purposes from http://www.intel.com/software/products/opensource/libraries/cv.htm. Image data structures

A.2. PROGRAMMING

83

from the IPL imaging library are used extensively. It is a set of more complex image processing functions compared to the IPL library.

84

APPENDIX A.

A.3

Extra Hierarchy Implementation Flowcharts

Figure A.2: ndbestnotin.m Flowchart

A.3. EXTRA HIERARCHY IMPLEMENTATION FLOWCHARTS

85

Figure A.3: anneal.m Flowchart

86

APPENDIX A.

Figure A.4: remove.m Flowchart

A.4. PROTOTYPE ORIENTATION CODE

87

A.4
A.4.1

Prototype Orientation Code

Orientated Edge Transform

for dir = 1:4 e2 = repmat(logical(uint8(0)), m, n); idxLocalMax = cannyFindLocalMaxima(dir,ax,ay,mag); idxWeak = idxLocalMax(mag(idxLocalMax) > lowThresh); e(idxWeak) = 1; e2(idxWeak) = 1; idxStrong = [idxStrong; idxWeak(mag(idxWeak) > highThresh)]; %this should create a direction map... rstrong = rem(idxStrong-1, m)+1; cstrong = floor((idxStrong-1)/m)+1; e2 = bwselect(e2, cstrong, rstrong, 8); e2 = bwmorph(e2, thin, 1); % Thin double (or triple) pixel wide contours

directionmatrix(:,:,dir) = dir.*(im2double(e2)); end

A.4.2

Orientation Map

fours = ([edge(i-1, j-1) edge(i-1, j+1) edge(i+1, j-1) edge(i+1, j+1)]); threes = ([edge(i-1, j) edge(i+1, j) edge(i, j-1) edge(i, j+1)]); if (min([threes fours])<40) [fourmin, fourpos] = min(fours); [threemin, threepos] = min(threes); if (fourmin > threemin) if (threemin < edge(i,j)) newedge(i,j) = threemin + 3; if (threepos > 2) direction(i,j) = direction(i, (j-1+(threepos - 3)*2)); else

88

APPENDIX A.

direction(i,j) = direction((i-1+(threepos-1)*2), j); end end else if(fourmin < edge(i,j)) newedge(i,j) = fourmin + 4; if (fourpos > 2) direction(i,j) = direction(i+1, (j-1+(fourpos - 3)*2)); else direction(i,j) = direction(i-1, (j-1+(fourpos - 1)*2)); end end end end

A.5. REJECTED PROTOTYPE IMPLEMENTATIONS

89

A.5
A.5.1

Rejected Prototype Implementations

Localised Tresholding

Localised Tresholding was investigated as a technique to remove the noise caused by trees. The localised thresholds were to be applied using the canny edge detector. The standard MATLAB edge detection command when used without parameters adjusts the threshold such that 70% of the pixels are registered as on. This is shown in this command:

highThresh = min(find(cumsum(counts) > PercentOfPixelsNotEdges*m*n)) / 64; where PercentOfPixelsNotEdges = 0.7.

This would allow edges to be found, even if the maximum gradients were very low. Assigning one global threshold for the whole image in a situation such as trac sign recognition, where there are many dierent areas, with many dierent textures and lighting conditions is not appropriate. In examples such as this classic gure A.5. Where the image contains few textures A global threshold is excellent. A localised threshold

Figure A.5: Simple Image for each section of the image would provide better edge detection. In areas of low gradients, the threshold could be lowered to detect ne details, whereas in higher gradient areas the threshold could be increased to show fewer edges. An informal statistical study of sections of tree image was conducted to see if any recognisable

90

APPENDIX A.

Figure A.6: Localised Thesholding characteristics of tree gradient detection could be found to raise the threshold in these areas. This would result in only major edges of the trees being found. As expected, areas of tree contained high average gradients with high standard deviations. There were many edges and hence variations in gradients. Unfortunately the same was true of the inside details of signs. By localising the threshold based on the mean and/or standard deviation of the gradient image in that region it was possible to keep only the major features of the trees and signs. This was achieved by setting an average threshold, similar to the MATLAB default, but raising it if the mean/standard deviation passed a certain threshold. As the results of this thresholding method show (gure A.6, the major features were kept, and this feature detection could have been used in the rst stage of a matching hierarchy to determine sign type, and rough position. The following code demonstrates the thresholding: sigma = std2(image); [m,n] = size(image); EX = median(image(:)); thres = EX + 1*sigma; thres = thres/max(image(:));

lowthres = EX/max(image(:));%thres - 1*sigma/max(col); if (lowthres >= thres) %std is really low

A.5. REJECTED PROTOTYPE IMPLEMENTATIONS

91

thres = 0.99; lowthres = 0.98; end if thres < minthres thres = minthres; lowthres = minthres - 0.05; end

Even though this provided a reasonable starting point for the search these calculations, standard deviation and mean, were computationally expensive, so a quicker method was sought.

A.5.2

Dierent Feature Extractions

A simpler method of implementing the same concept could have been using dierent levels of feature extraction for each level of the hierarchy. It becomes expensive to produce multiple feature extractions of the same image in MATLAB. Even when a custom canny edge detection was implemented to allow the use of the same gradient image every time. The custom canny edge detection did not perform well and was rejected in favour of other possible solutions.

A.5.3

Sub-Sampling

By sub-sampling the edge detection it was hoped the general shape of the sign would remain, but the trees would disappear or become more random compared to the distinct outline shape of the trac signs. It proved very dicult to sub-sample and retain the shape of the sign, as they were being detected at the smallest possible size at which the features could be resolved with the edge detection. This was to ensure they are detected as early as possible.

92

APPENDIX A.

A.6

UML of Real-Time System

Figure A.7: Intended Sequence Diagram

A.6. UML OF REAL-TIME SYSTEM

93

Figure A.8: Actual Class Diagram

94

APPENDIX A.

Figure A.9: Actual Sequence Diagram

A.7. CODE DETAILS OF REAL-TIME SYSTEM

95

A.7

Code Details of Real-Time System

Some of the functions from the IPL Image Processing Library were used and should be documented. Other complex sections of code where commenting may not be sucient are shown.

A.7.1

Distance Transform

When using a distance transform, and as presented later, it is necessary to truncate the values. This can be done when scaling the image type from oating point to integer. In this rst example the data is scaled such that only distances rom 0-5 are included in the output. This will evenly place these values from zero to the maximum of the data type being scaled to. Thus 5 will be 255, 4 200 ..., 1 50, 0 = 0.

cvDistTransform(imghinv,imghgray32F, CV_DIST_L2, CV_DIST_MASK_5, NULL); iplScaleFP(imghgray32F, imghtempdist, 0, 255); This second example from the template creation scales the distances such that all values that could be represented by an 8-bit unsigned integer are output. It then truncated this at 5, and scales it such that each distance is ten times its value. Thus 5 = 50, 4 = 40, etc... cvDistTransform(imghinv,imghgray32F, CV_DIST_L2, CV_DIST_MASK_5, NULL); iplScaleFP(imghgray32F, imghtempdist, 0, 255); iplThreshold(imghtempdist, imghmult, 5); iplMultiplyS(imghtempdist, imghtempdist, 10); iplAdd(imghtempdist, imghmult, imghtempdist);

A.7.2

Deallocation

Deallocation when using IplImage objects seems dicult. Especially when referencing them across classes. The structure and header must always be deallocate. In some instances of referencing, destroying the header has caused problems. So in these situations only the image data is deallocated.

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iplDeallocateImage(imgh);

iplDeallocate(imgh, IPL_IMAGE_HEADER);

It is possible to use IPL IMAGE ALL as a parameter, but if objects share IplROIs this will cause errors as they are also deallocated.

A.7.3

mytree

The method for creating a mytree concrete builder is not automated from the image hierarchy. It must be constructed in a bottom up approach. Various constructors are available for the leaf and node templates. To code this the following procedure should be used:

1. Create the root array 2. Create the arrays of leave templates 3. Create the combinational template for this group with the array of leaves as its children array 4. Repeat 2-3 for each leaf group 5. For each intermediate stage create an array of combination templates 6. Create the combinational template of the previous combinational template, pointing to the array of combinational templates as its child 7. Repeat 5-6 as necessary 8. Point each of the root templates to the appropriate combinational template

For examples see the letter hierarchies mytreea, mytreel. The variable names help describe the process as each template is named after the letters it represented.

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A.7.4

Template Format

The necessary format for images to be included in the template is an unsigned character le of each pixel (much like a bitmap). The pixel ordering is dierent. The MATLAB le templatecreate.m converts the images to the *.tmp format. Then they can just be read with a FILE pointer into a BYTE array. Use cvSetData to set and IplImage object to point to the data.

FILE *p_filemask; BYTE *p_datamask = new BYTE[TEMPX*TEMPY*3]; p_filemask = fopen(maskname, "rb"); fread(p_datamask, TEMPX*TEMPY, 3, p_filemask); fclose(p_filemask); imghmask = cvCreateImageHeader(cvSize(TEMPX, TEMPY), IPL_DEPTH_8U, 3); cvSetData(imghmask, p_datamask, TEMPX*3);

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A.8

Tested Enhancements/Renements to Real-Time System

Spiral Design

In a trac sign matching scenario, there are particular assumptions (already stated) that can be made about the location of a trac sign. The sign is more likely to be at a particular height, in a particular horizontal area. This property can be used to increase the speed of the search. The following search pattern was designed:

Figure A.10: Spiral Search Pattern Compared to a simple search following this or similar pattern: It can be faster if stopped when

Figure A.11: Straight Search Pattern a match is found. Thus this search would only be of advantage if only one sign was assumed present and false matches could be guaranteed not to occur. If there are multiple signs to be detected, or false matches are likely the entire area should be searched and any advantage of the spiralling search is lost. This design possibility was ruled out due to the likely occurrences of false matches shown by the prototype matching application.

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Temporal Filtering to Remove Trees

Temporal Filtering was briey investigated to remove trees. A simple subtraction of background from frame to frame would remove objects that change little. Due to the noise like nature of the tree edge detections, they are likely to change slightly regardless. The possibility of a sign being surrounded by tree, hence aect by this subtraction is also too great. Testing showed, that signs werent aected and trees were thinned of noise, but not suciently to make the overhead of background temporal ltering worthwhile.

Oriented Edges

Implementing the oriented edge algorithm prototyped in MATLAB, was briey attempted. Modifying the Open CV source code proved dicult and time consuming due to the poor documentation and commenting. When the forward and reverse matching was completed, it was demonstration that orientation information was not necessary with other renements.

Expanding all Possibilities or Best

At each level of the hierarchical search there are multiple methods of expanding the tree. The two main possibilities in this design are: Taking the best match above the thresholds at each level Taking every match above the thresholds at each level The initial design takes the best match at each level. Due to the small (< 50) nature of the hierarchies in this example it is unlikely the incorrect path will be chosen by taking the best option. In practise this appeared to provide suciently accurate results. This will also improve the eciency of the matching. Taking every match would require a global knowledge of the results of each thread of the recursive search. At the end of the matching process, if multiple signs (leaf nodes) had been detected, they would need to be compared. By allowing only one thread at each level the leaf template found can be displayed (by copying onto the output), and then the process can iterate to the next position, with no knowledge of which template was found.

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Reducing the truncated distance

Initially the design used the distance transform straight from the cvDistTransform function. As opposed to the MATLAB implementation this calculated, using the two pass method [25], the distance to ininity i.e. the furthest distance in that image. The MATLAB implementation only used a set number of iterations. Comparative one dimensional cross sections of these distance transforms of a point would be as follows: It can be seen that points a fair way from

Figure A.12: Untruncated Distance Transform

Figure A.13: Truncated Distance Transform the edge detection are still given a high value in the untruncated situation. In the truncated case, pixels beyond a certain distance are discounted, similar to a weighted hausdor matching technique. By only allowing pixels close to the object to score, poor matching features get ignored, increasing the accuracy of the matching.

Maximum vs. Minimum

The search was tested as a search for the maximum match and minimum. Maximum matching inverting the distance transform. This has the benet of not weighting pixels that dont match as the truncated pixels are zero.

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The distance matching scores are an average per pixel. If pixels outside the truncated distance are scored as the maximum of the image type, i.e. 255. They can still weight the score. If they are given zero, they will contribute nothing but their presence in the average. No noticeable dierence could be seen between either.

Scaling the distance

By scaling the inverted truncated distance I can control the weighting given to pixels relative to the threshold. If I were to use 255, 254, 253... to represent 0, 1, 2... Missing features can destroy a match, and little accuracy over the scale is given, due to the poor resolution. By scaling this to 250, 240, 230.... or other similar amounts, I can control the weighting of pixels that are scored. Non-linear functions (including the truncation mentioned earlier) could be applied to eect the matching.

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APPENDIX A.

A.9
A.9.1

Hierarchy Results
Diamond Signs

Figure A.14: Original Scores

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Figure A.15: Optimised Scores

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The following leaf level groupings were generated gures A.16-A.29.

Figure A.16: First Group

Figure A.17: First Group Template

Figure A.18: Second Group, template = self

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Figure A.19: Third Group, template = self

Figure A.20: Fourth Group

Figure A.21: Fourth Group Template

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Figure A.22: Fifth Group

Figure A.23: Fifth Group Template

Figure A.24: Sixth Group

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Figure A.25: Sixth Group Template

Figure A.26: Seventh Group

Figure A.27: Seventh Group Template

Figure A.28: Eigth Group

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Figure A.29: Eight Group Template

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It is apparent from inspection of the groups that the optimisation is sensible. Though the crossroad image has not been placed in a group with the left side road image, upon closer inspection it can be seen that despite their likeness neither have similar features aligned with the sign outline. By applying the same commands on the template images, the next level of the hierarchy is generated. The rst grouping was of the 1st, 2nd and 4th groups (gure A.30).The second group was of the 3rd and 5th groups (gure A.32). The Crossroad sign was still by itself and the last grouping was of the 7th and 8th groups (gure A.34).

Figure A.30: First Template Group

Figure A.31: First Template Group Combinational Template

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APPENDIX A.

Figure A.32: Second Template Group

Figure A.33: Second Template Group Combinational Template

Figure A.34: Last Template Group

Figure A.35: Last Template Group Combinational Template

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A.9.2

Circular Signs Scores

Figure A.36: Second Level Optimisation

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APPENDIX A.

A.10

Matlab Matching Results

This is the original image (gure A.37), the oriented edge detection (gure A.38) and distance transform (gure A.39).

Figure A.37: Original Image

Figure A.38: Oriented Edge Image This diagram shows the scores achieved at points throughout the image. The unnecessary expansion of the search over noisy areas of the edge detection can be seen (gures A.40 A.41)

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Figure A.39: Distance Transform Image and the match (gure A.42).

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APPENDIX A.

Figure A.40: Scores

Figure A.41: Closer View of scores

Figure A.42: Match

A.11. CD

115

File alreadyin chamfer combinegroups createhier createtemp createTree directionchamfer.m

Description Checks if the value is already in an array Performs a 3-4 chamfer Transform Combines the groups Creates the hierarchy Creates templates Imports les from directory 3-4 Chamfer Transform also produces direction information

ndbestnotin remove setup1

Finds the best group not in the hierarchy Removes a group from a hierarchy makes all the pairs, triplets and quads Table A.1: Hierarchy

A.11

CD

Included on the CD (with the code) are a PDF version of this document and demonstration footage of matching.

A.12
A.12.1

Code
Listing

All code is in the directory codelisting. The MATLAB Hierarchy creation code is in the hierarchy directory, the MATLAB matching code in the matching directory, and the real-time code in EZRGB24, retaining the directory name of the example it is based on.

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File nonmaxsuppression R10Simplepyroverlay overlay

Description Simple Non-maximal Suppression ne/coarse search using one template takes an image and a template and simply translates the template across the image

simplepyrdirectedoverlay.m

simple pyramid overlay with edge direction

simplepyroverlay.m

simplepyroverlay - simple necoarse overlaying Table A.2: MATLAB Matching

File EZRGB24 mytree mytemplatev mytreev mytreel

Description The Filter Abstract Builder for Trees Template Class A Concrete Builder Another Concrete Builder Table A.3: Real-Time

Hierarchy

MATLAB Matching

This code is unnished hence only useful les are described.

Real-Time

Header les are also included. The le for creating templates (templatecreate.m) is in the coexisting directory. Templates have been included in the templates directory under coexisting but not described.

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A.12.2

Compilation

Compilation of the Visual C++ code requires the installation of Microsofts DirectX SDK, IPL Image Processing Library and OpenCV. The EZRGB24 example which this is based on needs the baseclasses as referenced in the project settings. Include paths must be set. It must also be able to nd the *.lib les for IPL and OpenCV at compile and the appropriate *.dlls at run time. See Brian Lovells (lovell@itee.uq.edu.au) notes from ELEC4600 on compiling direct show applications for more information. To run the code templates must be found (Hidden in codelisting/templates/temps).