Template Matching with Mask - c++

Question

I want to perform Template matching with mask. In general Template matching can be made faster by converting the image from Spacial domain into Frequency domain. But is there any any method i can apply if i want to perform the same with mask? I'm using opencv c++. Is there any matching function already there in opencv for this task?
My current Approach:
Bitwise Xor Image A & Image B with Mask.
Count the Non-Zero Pixels.
Fill the Resultant matrix with this count.
Search for maxi-ma.
Few parameters I'm guessing now are:
Skip the Tile position if the matches are less than 25%.
Skip the tile position if the matches are less than 25%.
Skip the Tile position if the previous Tile has matches are less than 50%.
My question: is there any algorithm to do this matching already? Is there any mathematical operation which can speed up this process?

Answer 1

With binary images, you can use directly HU-Moments and Mahalanobis distance to find if image A is similar to image B. If the distance tends to 0, then the images are the same.
Of course you can use also Features detectors so see what matches, but for pictures like these, HU Moments or Features detectors will give approximately same results, but HU Moments are more efficient.
Using findContours, you can extract the black regions inside the white star and fill them, in order to have image A = image B.
Other approach: using findContours on your mask and apply the result to Image A (extracting the Region of Interest), you can extract what's inside the star and count how many black pixels you have (the mismatching ones).

Answer 2

I have same requirement and I have tried the almost same way. As in the image, I want to match the castle. The castle has a different shield image and variable length clan name and also grass background(This image comes from game Clash of Clans). The normal opencv matchTemplate does not work. So I write my own.
I follow the ways of matchTemplate to create a result image, but with different algorithm.
The core idea is to count the matched pixel under the mask. The code is following, it is simple.
This works fine, but the time cost is high. As you can see, it costs 457ms.
Now I am working on the optimization.
The source and template images are both CV_8U3C, mask image is CV_8U. Match one channel is OK. It is more faster, but it still costs high.
Mat tmp(matTempl.cols, matTempl.rows, matTempl.type());
int matchCount = 0;
float maxVal = 0;
double areaInvert = 1.0 / countNonZero(matMask);
for (int j = 0; j < resultRows; j++)
{
float* data = imgResult.ptr<float>(j);
for (int i = 0; i < resultCols; i++)
{
Mat matROI(matSource, Rect(i, j, matTempl.cols, matTempl.rows));
tmp.setTo(Scalar(0));
bitwise_xor(matROI, matTempl, tmp);
bitwise_and(tmp, matMask, tmp);
data[i] = 1.0f - float(countNonZero(tmp) * areaInvert);
if (data[i] > matchingDegree)
{
SRect rc;
rc.left = i;
rc.top = j;
rc.right = i + imgTemplate.cols;
rc.bottom = j + imgTemplate.rows;
rcOuts.push_back(rc);
if ( data[i] > maxVal)
{
maxVal = data[i];
maxIndex = rcOuts.size() - 1;
}
if (++matchCount == maxMatchs)
{
Log_Warn("Too many matches, stopped at: " << matchCount);
return true;
}
}
}
}
It says I have not enough reputations to post image....
http://i.stack.imgur.com/mJrqU.png
New added:
I success optimize the algorithm by using key points. Calculate all the points is cost, but it is faster to calculate only server key points. See the picture, the costs decrease greatly, now it is about 7ms.
I still can not post image, please visit: http://i.stack.imgur.com/ePcD9.png
Please give me reputations, so I can post images. :)

Answer 3

There is a technical formulation for template matching with mask in OpenCV Documentation, which works well. It can be used by calling cv::matchTemplate and its source code is also available under the Intel License.