Accurate Computation of Zernike Moments in Polar Coordinates

An algorithm for high-precision numerical computation of Zernike moments is presented. The algorithm, based on the introduced polar pixel tiling scheme, does not exhibit the geometric error and numerical integration error which are inherent in conventional methods based on Cartesian coordinates. This yields a dramatic improvement of the Zernike moments accuracy in terms of their reconstruction and invariance properties. The introduced image tiling requires an interpolation algorithm which turns out to be of the second order importance compared to the discretization error. Various comparisons are made between the accuracy of the proposed method and that of commonly used techniques. The results reveal the great advantage of our approach.