Features2d + Homography not giving appropriate results

Question

I am trying to detect an object using the SurfFeatureDetect and FLANN matcher. However, the code is not able to detect the image accurately. I have also posted the results in pictorial format.

Here's my code from the opencv tutorial website

int main(int argc, char** argv){
if (argc != 3){
readme(); return -1;
}

Mat img_object = imread(argv[1], CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE);
Mat img_scene = imread(argv[2], CV_LOAD_IMAGE_GRAYSCALE);
if (!img_object.data || !img_scene.data)
{
    std::cout << " --(!) Error reading images " << std::endl; return -1;
}

//-- Step 1: Detect the keypoints using SURF Detector
int minHessian = 100;

SurfFeatureDetector detector(minHessian);
std::vector<KeyPoint> keypoints_object, keypoints_scene;

detector.detect(img_object, keypoints_object);
detector.detect(img_scene, keypoints_scene);

//-- Step 2: Calculate descriptors (feature vectors)
SurfDescriptorExtractor extractor;

Mat descriptors_object, descriptors_scene;

extractor.compute(img_object, keypoints_object, descriptors_object);
extractor.compute(img_scene, keypoints_scene, descriptors_scene);

//-- Step 3: Matching descriptor vectors using FLANN matcher
FlannBasedMatcher matcher;
std::vector< DMatch > matches;
matcher.match(descriptors_object, descriptors_scene, matches);

double max_dist = 0; double min_dist = 100;

//-- Quick calculation of max and min distances between keypoints
for (int i = 0; i < descriptors_object.rows; i++)
{
    double dist = matches[i].distance;
    if (dist < min_dist) min_dist = dist;
    if (dist > max_dist) max_dist = dist;
} 

printf("-- Max dist : %f \n", max_dist);
printf("-- Min dist : %f \n", min_dist);
//-- Draw only "good" matches (i.e. whose distance is less than 3*min_dist )
std::vector< DMatch > good_matches;

for (int i = 0; i < descriptors_object.rows; i++)
{
    if (matches[i].distance < 3 * min_dist)
    {
        good_matches.push_back(matches[i]);
    }
}

Mat img_matches;
drawMatches(img_object, keypoints_object, img_scene, keypoints_scene,
    good_matches, img_matches, Scalar::all(-1), Scalar::all(-1),
    vector<char>(), DrawMatchesFlags::NOT_DRAW_SINGLE_POINTS);  

//-- Localize the object
std::vector<Point2f> obj;
std::vector<Point2f> scene;   

for (int i = 0; i < good_matches.size(); i++)
{
    //-- Get the keypoints from the good matches
    obj.push_back(keypoints_object[good_matches[i].queryIdx].pt);
    scene.push_back(keypoints_scene[good_matches[i].trainIdx].pt);
}

Mat H = findHomography(obj, scene, CV_RANSAC);

//-- Get the corners from the image_1 ( the object to be "detected" )
std::vector<Point2f> obj_corners(4);
obj_corners[0] = cvPoint(0, 0); obj_corners[1] = cvPoint(img_object.cols, 0);
obj_corners[2] = cvPoint(img_object.cols, img_object.rows); obj_corners[3] = cvPoint(0, img_object.rows);
std::vector<Point2f> scene_corners(4);

perspectiveTransform(obj_corners, scene_corners, H);

//-- Draw lines between the corners (the mapped object in the scene - image_2 )
line(img_matches, scene_corners[0] + Point2f(img_object.cols, 0), scene_corners[1] + Point2f(img_object.cols, 0), Scalar(0, 255, 0), 4);
line(img_matches, scene_corners[1] + Point2f(img_object.cols, 0), scene_corners[2] + Point2f(img_object.cols, 0), Scalar(0, 255, 0), 4);
line(img_matches, scene_corners[2] + Point2f(img_object.cols, 0), scene_corners[3] + Point2f(img_object.cols, 0), Scalar(0, 255, 0), 4);
line(img_matches, scene_corners[3] + Point2f(img_object.cols, 0), scene_corners[0] + Point2f(img_object.cols, 0), Scalar(0, 255, 0), 4);

//-- Show detected matches
imshow("Good Matches & Object detection", img_matches);

waitKey(0);
return 0;}

/** @function readme */
void readme()
{
std::cout << " Usage: ./SURF_descriptor <img1> <img2>" << std::endl;}

Answer 1

That is a very common failure. The problem is that the homography has 8 degree of freedom (8DOF). This means that you need at least 4 correct correspondences to calculate a good homography:

As you can see, the homography has 8 parameters (the last parameter h₃₃ is just a scale factor). The problem arises when other than good corrspondces (inlier) you need to filter out bad correspondences (outlier). When the are more outliers than inliers (total/outliers > 50%) the RANSAC procedure cannot find the outlier and you obtain weird results.

Solutions to this problem are not easy. You could:

• Use a training image with a similar out-of-plane rotation (and a similar scale) of the object in your query image.
• Or, use a transformation with less degree of freedom (such as similarity transform). In this way you will need less inliers. Altho OpenCV lacks support for this simpler transformation with a robust fitting method.