Efficient object matching using affine-invariant deformable contour

An affine-invariant deformable contour model for object matching, called affine-invariant eigensnake (AI-ES), is presented in the Bayesian framework. In AI-ES, the prior distribution of object shapes is estimated and utilized to constrain the prototype contour, which is dynamically adjustable in the matching process. Also, an affine-invariant internal energy is presented to define the global and local shape deformation of the contours between the shape domain and the image domain. Experiments on real object matching show that the proposed method is more robust and insensitive to the positions, viewpoints, and large deformations of object shapes, than the active shape model (ASM) and the AI-snake model.