SIFT Feature Detection implementation
Copyright (C) 2004-2005, Sebastian Nowozin (nowozin@cs.tu-berlin.de)
Introduction
============
The SIFT feature detection algorithm has been invented and published by David
Lowe at the University of British Columbia. A detailed account of the complete
algorithm is available at http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~lowe/papers/ijcv03-abs.html
The algorithm provides the capability to identify key feature points within
arbitrary images. It further extracts highly distinct information for each
such point and allows to characterize the point invariant to a number of
modifications to the image. It is invariant to contrast/brightness changes, to
rotation, scaling and partially invariant to other kinds of transformations.
The algorithm can be flexibly used to create input data for image matching,
object identification and other computer vision related algorithms.
The use of the SIFT algorithm for automatic panorama creation has been
developed by Matthew Brown and David Lowe in their paper "Recognising
Panoramas" available at http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/papers/iccv2003.pdf and
examples of this application are available at
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/panorama/panorama.html
This package provides an implementation of the SIFT algorithm and a set of
utilities to utilize the algorithm to match two or more images. As output, a
number of control points are created, which specify one and the same image
location in two images. The output is created as project file for the Hugin
panorama stitching software, which is available at http://hugin.sourceforge.net/
License
=======
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
WARNING:
"The University of British Columbia has applied for a patent on the SIFT
algorithm in the United States. Applications of this software may
require a license from the University of British Columbia."
The detailed license for this package is available in the "LICENSE" file,
please read and acknowledge it before using the software. The SIFT algorithm
is patented in the United States and as such restricted in use within the
United States. I believe it is safe to use the software for any purpose
outside of the US, but I will not take any guarantee for doing so. Inside the
US, please consult the licensing office of the University of British Columbia.
Installation
============
The only dependencies are:
libpano13, libpng, libtiff, libjpeg, zlib and libxml2
autopano-sift-C uses a standard cmake build system:
cmake .
make
make install