Saliency-based keypoint selection for fast object detection and matching

In this paper we present a new approach to rank and select keypoints based on their saliency for object detection and matching under moderate viewpoint and lighting changes. Saliency is defined in terms of detectability, repeatability and distinctiveness by considering both the keypoint strength (as returned by the detector algorithm) and the associated local descriptor discriminating power. Our experiments prove that selecting a small amount of available keypoints (e.g., 10%) not only boosts efficiency but can also lead to better detection/matching accuracy thus making the proposed method attractive for real-time applications (e.g., augmented reality).