Feature-Based Image Analysis

According to Marr's paradigm of computational vision the first process is an extraction of relevant features. The goal of this paper is to quantify and characterize the information carried by features using image-structure measured at feature-points to reconstruct images. In this way, we indirectly evaluate the concept of feature-based image analysis. The main conclusions are that (i) a reasonably low number of features characterize the image to such a high degree, that visually appealing reconstructions are possible, (ii) different feature-types complement each other and all carry important information. The strategy is to define metamery classes of images and examine the information content of a canonical least informative representative of this class. Algorithms for identifying these are given. Finally, feature detectors localizing the most informative points relative to different complexity measures derived from models of natural image statistics, are given.