A real-time embedded architecture for SIFT

SIFT has shown a great success in various computer vision applications. However, its large computational complexity has been a challenge to most embedded implementations. This paper presents a low-cost embedded system based on a new architecture that successfully integrates FPGA and DSP. It optimizes the FPGA architecture for the feature detection step of SIFT to reduce the resource utilization, and optimizes the implementation of the feature description step using a high-performance DSP. Due to this novel design, this system can detect SIFT feature and extract SIFT descriptor for detected features in real-time. Extensive experiments demonstrate its effectiveness and efficiency.