CSIFT: A SIFT Descriptor with Color Invariant Characteristics

Abstract

SIFT has been proven to be the most robust local invariant feature descriptor. SIFT is designed mainly for gray images. However, color provides valuable information in object description and matching tasks. Many objects can be misclassified if their color contents are ignored. This paper addresses this problem and proposes a novel colored local invariant feature descriptor. Instead of using the gray space to represent the input image, the proposed approach builds the SIFT descriptors in a color invariant space. The built Colored SIFT (CSIFT) is more robust than the conventional SIFT with respect to color and photometrical variations. The evaluation results support the potential of the proposed approach.