Common Interfaces of Generic Descriptor Matchers

Matchers of keypoint descriptors in OpenCV have wrappers with a common interface that enables you to easily switch between different algorithms solving the same problem. This section is devoted to matching descriptors that cannot be represented as vectors in a multidimensional space. GenericDescriptorMatcher is a more generic interface for descriptors. It does not make any assumptions about descriptor representation. Every descriptor with the :ocv:class:`DescriptorExtractor` interface has a wrapper with the GenericDescriptorMatcher interface (see :ocv:class:`VectorDescriptorMatcher` ). There are descriptors such as the One-way descriptor and Ferns that have the GenericDescriptorMatcher interface implemented but do not support DescriptorExtractor.

GenericDescriptorMatcher

Abstract interface for extracting and matching a keypoint descriptor. There are also :ocv:class:`DescriptorExtractor` and :ocv:class:`DescriptorMatcher` for these purposes but their interfaces are intended for descriptors represented as vectors in a multidimensional space. GenericDescriptorMatcher is a more generic interface for descriptors. DescriptorMatcher and GenericDescriptorMatcher have two groups of match methods: for matching keypoints of an image with another image or with an image set.

class GenericDescriptorMatcher
{
public:
    GenericDescriptorMatcher();
    virtual ~GenericDescriptorMatcher();

    virtual void add( const vector<Mat>& images,
                      vector<vector<KeyPoint> >& keypoints );

    const vector<Mat>& getTrainImages() const;
    const vector<vector<KeyPoint> >& getTrainKeypoints() const;
    virtual void clear();

    virtual void train() = 0;

    virtual bool isMaskSupported() = 0;

    void classify( const Mat& queryImage,
                   vector<KeyPoint>& queryKeypoints,
                   const Mat& trainImage,
                   vector<KeyPoint>& trainKeypoints ) const;
    void classify( const Mat& queryImage,
                   vector<KeyPoint>& queryKeypoints );

    /*
     * Group of methods to match keypoints from an image pair.
     */
    void match( const Mat& queryImage, vector<KeyPoint>& queryKeypoints,
                const Mat& trainImage, vector<KeyPoint>& trainKeypoints,
                vector<DMatch>& matches, const Mat& mask=Mat() ) const;
    void knnMatch( const Mat& queryImage, vector<KeyPoint>& queryKeypoints,
                   const Mat& trainImage, vector<KeyPoint>& trainKeypoints,
                   vector<vector<DMatch> >& matches, int k,
                   const Mat& mask=Mat(), bool compactResult=false ) const;
    void radiusMatch( const Mat& queryImage, vector<KeyPoint>& queryKeypoints,
                      const Mat& trainImage, vector<KeyPoint>& trainKeypoints,
                      vector<vector<DMatch> >& matches, float maxDistance,
                      const Mat& mask=Mat(), bool compactResult=false ) const;
    /*
     * Group of methods to match keypoints from one image to an image set.
     */
    void match( const Mat& queryImage, vector<KeyPoint>& queryKeypoints,
                vector<DMatch>& matches, const vector<Mat>& masks=vector<Mat>() );
    void knnMatch( const Mat& queryImage, vector<KeyPoint>& queryKeypoints,
                   vector<vector<DMatch> >& matches, int k,
                   const vector<Mat>& masks=vector<Mat>(), bool compactResult=false );
    void radiusMatch( const Mat& queryImage, vector<KeyPoint>& queryKeypoints,
                      vector<vector<DMatch> >& matches, float maxDistance,
                      const vector<Mat>& masks=vector<Mat>(), bool compactResult=false );

    virtual void read( const FileNode& );
    virtual void write( FileStorage& ) const;

    virtual Ptr<GenericDescriptorMatcher> clone( bool emptyTrainData=false ) const = 0;

protected:
    ...
};

GenericDescriptorMatcher::add

Adds images and their keypoints to the training collection stored in the class instance.

GenericDescriptorMatcher::getTrainImages

Returns a train image collection.

GenericDescriptorMatcher::getTrainKeypoints

Returns a train keypoints collection.

GenericDescriptorMatcher::clear

Clears a train collection (images and keypoints).

GenericDescriptorMatcher::train

Trains descriptor matcher

Prepares descriptor matcher, for example, creates a tree-based structure, to extract descriptors or to optimize descriptors matching.

GenericDescriptorMatcher::isMaskSupported

Returns true if a generic descriptor matcher supports masking permissible matches.

GenericDescriptorMatcher::classify

Classifies keypoints from a query set.

The method classifies each keypoint from a query set. The first variant of the method takes a train image and its keypoints as an input argument. The second variant uses the internally stored training collection that can be built using the GenericDescriptorMatcher::add method.

The methods do the following:

1. Call the GenericDescriptorMatcher::match method to find correspondence between the query set and the training set.
2. Set the class_id field of each keypoint from the query set to class_id of the corresponding keypoint from the training set.

GenericDescriptorMatcher::match

Finds the best match in the training set for each keypoint from the query set.

The methods find the best match for each query keypoint. In the first variant of the method, a train image and its keypoints are the input arguments. In the second variant, query keypoints are matched to the internally stored training collection that can be built using the GenericDescriptorMatcher::add method. Optional mask (or masks) can be passed to specify which query and training descriptors can be matched. Namely, queryKeypoints[i] can be matched with trainKeypoints[j] only if mask.at<uchar>(i,j) is non-zero.

GenericDescriptorMatcher::knnMatch

Finds the k best matches for each query keypoint.

The methods are extended variants of GenericDescriptorMatch::match. The parameters are similar, and the semantics is similar to DescriptorMatcher::knnMatch. But this class does not require explicitly computed keypoint descriptors.

GenericDescriptorMatcher::radiusMatch

For each query keypoint, finds the training keypoints not farther than the specified distance.

The methods are similar to DescriptorMatcher::radius. But this class does not require explicitly computed keypoint descriptors.

GenericDescriptorMatcher::read

Reads a matcher object from a file node.

GenericDescriptorMatcher::write

Writes a match object to a file storage.

GenericDescriptorMatcher::clone

Clones the matcher.

VectorDescriptorMatcher

Class used for matching descriptors that can be described as vectors in a finite-dimensional space.

class CV_EXPORTS VectorDescriptorMatcher : public GenericDescriptorMatcher
{
public:
    VectorDescriptorMatcher( const Ptr<DescriptorExtractor>& extractor, const Ptr<DescriptorMatcher>& matcher );
    virtual ~VectorDescriptorMatcher();

    virtual void add( const vector<Mat>& imgCollection,
                      vector<vector<KeyPoint> >& pointCollection );
    virtual void clear();
    virtual void train();
    virtual bool isMaskSupported();

    virtual void read( const FileNode& fn );
    virtual void write( FileStorage& fs ) const;

    virtual Ptr<GenericDescriptorMatcher> clone( bool emptyTrainData=false ) const;

protected:
    ...
};

Example:

VectorDescriptorMatcher matcher( new SurfDescriptorExtractor,
                                 new BruteForceMatcher<L2<float> > );