We propose a convolutional neural network (ConvNet) based approach for learning local image descriptors which can be used for significantly improved patch matching and 3D reconstructions. A multi-resolution ConvNet is used for learning keypoint descriptors. We also propose a new dataset consisting of an order of magnitude more number of scenes, images, and positive and negative correspondences compared to the currently available Multi-View Stereo (MVS) [18] dataset. The new dataset also has better coverage of the overall viewpoint, scale, and lighting changes in comparison to the MVS dataset. We evaluate our approach on publicly available datasets, such as Oxford Affine Covariant Regions Dataset (ACRD) [12], MVS [18], Synthetic [6] and Strecha [15] datasets to quantify the image descriptor performance. Scenes from the Oxford ACRD, MVS and Synthetic datasets are used for evaluating the patch matching performance of the learnt descriptors while the Strecha dataset is used to evaluate the 3D reconstruction task. Experiments show that the proposed descriptor outperforms the current state-of-the-art descriptors in both the evaluation tasks.
Few papers in the literature, study patch matching as a task @cite_24 @cite_3 , where the feature layers (Siamese network) and the metric learning layers (fully-connected layers) are jointly learnt in an end-to-end fashion. These type of ConvNets cannot be used as general descriptors for any tasks such as reconstruction except patch matching. Whereas, @cite_6 uses the features extracted at the output of the Siamese networks without learning any non-linear decision network or metric learning layer. These type of descriptors, are generic in nature and can be used for many tasks as drop-in replacement of traditional descriptors including keypoint matching, 3D reconstruction, and tracking. Since, metrics to compare between patches are not learned, a generic metric such as @math distance to compare patches and train the network. Learning feature descriptors using triplets of patches was investigated in @cite_23 using shallow networks in order to reduce the descriptor extraction time. Similar to @cite_6 @cite_23 , the aim of the proposed approach is to extract descriptors for local image patches that can be used for 3D reconstruction.
@cite_24 @cite_23 @cite_6 @cite_3
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In this paper we show how to learn directly from image data (i.e., without resorting to manually-designed features) a general similarity function for comparing image patches, which is a task of fundamental importance for many computer vision problems. To encode such a function, we opt for a CNN-based model that is trained to account for a wide variety of changes in image appearance. To that end, we explore and study multiple neural network architectures, which are specifically adapted to this task. We show that such an approach can significantly outperform the state-of-the-art on several problems and benchmark datasets. Deep learning has revolutionalized image-level tasks such as classification, but patch-level tasks, such as correspondence, still rely on hand-crafted features, e.g. SIFT. In this paper we use Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to learn discriminant patch representations and in particular train a Siamese network with pairs of (non-)corresponding patches. We deal with the large number of potential pairs with the combination of a stochastic sampling of the training set and an aggressive mining strategy biased towards patches that are hard to classify. By using the L2 distance during both training and testing we develop 128-D descriptors whose euclidean distances reflect patch similarity, and which can be used as a drop-in replacement for any task involving SIFT. We demonstrate consistent performance gains over the state of the art, and generalize well against scaling and rotation, perspective transformation, non-rigid deformation, and illumination changes. Our descriptors are efficient to compute and amenable to modern GPUs, and are publicly available. Motivated by recent successes on learning feature representations and on learning feature comparison functions, we propose a unified approach to combining both for training a patch matching system. Our system, dubbed Match-Net, consists of a deep convolutional network that extracts features from patches and a network of three fully connected layers that computes a similarity between the extracted features. To ensure experimental repeatability, we train MatchNet on standard datasets and employ an input sampler to augment the training set with synthetic exemplar pairs that reduce overfitting. Once trained, we achieve better computational efficiency during matching by disassembling MatchNet and separately applying the feature computation and similarity networks in two sequential stages. We perform a comprehensive set of experiments on standard datasets to carefully study the contributions of each aspect of MatchNet, with direct comparisons to established methods. Our results confirm that our unified approach improves accuracy over previous state-of-the-art results on patch matching datasets, while reducing the storage requirement for descriptors. We make pre-trained MatchNet publicly available.