Image Features Based on a New Approach to 2D Rotation Invariant Quadrature Filters

Quadrature filters are a well known method of low-level computer vision for estimating certain properties of the signal, as there are local amplitude and local phase. However, 2D quadrature filters suffer from being not rotation invariant. Furthermore, they do not allow to detect truly 2D features as corners and junctions unless they are combined to form the structure tensor. The present paper deals with a new 2D generalization of quadrature filters which is rotation invariant and allows to analyze intrinsically 2D signals. Hence, the new approach can be considered as the union of properties of quadrature filters and of the structure tensor. The proposed method first estimates the local orientation of the signal which is then used for steering some basis filter responses. Certain linear combination of these filter responses are derived which allow to estimate the local isotropy and two perpendicular phases of the signal. The phase model is based on the assumption of an angular band-limitation in the signal. As an application, a simple and efficient point-of-interest operator is presented and it is compared to the Plessey detector.