Illumination robust template matching based on nearest neighbor

We propose a novel method for the illumination robust template matching in unconstrained environments, named illumination robust template matching (IRTM). IRTM is based on the patch diversity of the Nearest-Neighbor. A core component is to calculate the similarity between patch pairs. Without illumination change, the Euclidean distance of appearance and geometric features jointly measure the similarity well. However, the illumination change will significantly affect the confidence of measure. In this paper, based on the relative pixel values that do not change with illumination, we define an illumination-robust distance function. With experiments, IRTM is shown to be a well-performing similarity measure against illumination changes, non-rigid geometric deformations, as well as background clutter, and occlusions.