An object finder program for detecting presence of a 3D object in a 2D
image containing a 2D representation of the 3D object. The object finder
uses the wavelet transform of the input 2D image for object detection. A
pre-selected number of view-based detectors are trained on sample images
prior to performing the detection on an unknown image. These detectors
then operate on the given input image and compute a quantized wavelet
transform for the entire input image. The object detection then proceeds
with sampling of the quantized wavelet coefficients at different image
window locations on the input image and efficient look-up of pre-computed
log-likelihood tables to determine object presence. The object finder's
coarse-to-fine object detection strategy coupled with exhaustive object
search across different positions and scales results in an efficient and
accurate object detection scheme. The object finder detects a 3D object
over a wide range in angular variation (e.g., 180 degrees) through the
combination of a small number of detectors each specialized to a small
range within this range of angular variation.
