Edge and corner detection by color invariants

Gray-based features are widely used in computer vision applications, while image color is a very important source, which can provide more feature information. To fully exploit color data, a color saturation invariant based on dichromatic reflection model is first constructed. The invariant is an object reflectance property independent of viewpoint and illumination direction. The saturation invariant is then synthesized with existing hue invariant to detect edge and corner features in color image. Experiments show that the detection method proposed here can more effectively tap into color information and achieve true target features due to its lower sensitivity to shadow, shading and highlight. Moreover, when comparing with many other existing edges and corners detecting methods, experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method performs better in detection accurate and effective. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.