A useful filter for pattern recognition must strike a compromise between the conflicting requirements of in-class distortion tolerance and out-of-class discrimination. Such a filter will be bandpass in nature, the high-frequency response being attenuated to provide less sensitivity to in-class variations, while the low frequencies must be removed, since they compromise the discrimination ability of the filter. A convenient bandpass is the difference of Gaussian (DOG) function, which provides a close approximation to the Laplacian of Gaussian. We describe the effect of a preprocessing operation applied to a DOG filtered image. This operation is shown to result in greater tolerance to in-class variation while maintaining an excellent discrimination ability. Additionally, the introduction of nonlinearity is shown to provide greater robustness in the filter response to noise and background clutter in the input scene.

© 1997 Optical Society of America

[Optical Society of America ]

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