Detection and matching of curvilinear structures

We propose an approach to curvilinear and wiry object detection and matching based on a new curvilinear region detector (CRD) and a shape context-like descriptor (COH). Standard methods for local patch detection and description are not directly applicable to wiry objects and curvilinear structures, such as roads, railroads and rivers in satellite and aerial images, vessels and veins in medical images, cables, poles and fences in urban scenes, stems and tree branches in natural images, since they assume the object is compact, i.e. that most elliptical patches around features cover only the object. However, wiry objects often have no flat parts and most neighborhoods include both foreground a…