Deformation tolerant generalized Hough transform for sketch-based image retrieval in complex scenes

Sketch-based image retrieval systems need to handle two main problems. First of all, they have to recognize shapes similar but not necessarily identical to the user's query. Hence, exact object identification techniques do not fit in this case. The second problem is the selection of the image features to compare with the user's sketch. In domain-independent visual repositories, real-life images with non-uniform background and possible occluding objects make this second task particularly hard. We address the second problem proposing a variant of the well-known Generalized Hough Transform (GHT), which is a robust object identification technique for unsegmented images. Moreover, we solve the first problem modifying the GHT to deal with an inexact matching problem. In this paper, we show how this idea can be efficiently and accurately realized. Experimental results are shown with two different databases of real, unsegmented images. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.