Pattern and object recognition with COSFIRE

[Almar Klein]

Hi all,

Just wanted to mention an algorithm which I was very impressed by and 
which might be an awesome addition to scikit-image. The algorithm is 
called COSFIRE (Combination of Shifted Filter Responses).

I saw a talk by Geore Azzopardi, who presented the use of the algorithm 
for object and patter recognition. I was very impressed with the quality 
of segmentation of the shown examples, but also with the wide variety of 
image data (e.g. retina images, traffic signs, hand-written characters, 
and more).

The filter is inspired by how the brain processes visual information, 
and according to the author the algorithm is actually quite simple. The 
algorithm was the topic of his PhD and he's going to continue working on 
it in his new job.

The code (in Matlab) is available, so it might be worth a shot to try 
and port it to Python.

Some links:

- PhD thesis: http://www.cs.rug.nl/~george/phd-thesis/
- Matlab code: nl.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/37395
- Paper in MIA: 
http://www.medicalimageanalysisjournal.com/article/S1361-8415%2814%2900136-4/abstract

- Almar