Retrieving 3D CAD models using 2D images with optimized weights

An effective method for retrieving 3D models is to represent and discriminate them with their 2D images projected from multiple viewpoints. Such view-based methods conform more closely to human visual recognition for 3D model retrieval, since the human retina essentially captures 2D images. However, most of the existing view-based methods do not take into account that different views have different importance even though they belong to the same object. To address this problem, we propose a novel view-based method for 3D CAD model retrieval. First, the PHOG descriptor is employed to describe the 2D images projected from a model. Then, Lagrange multipliers, vector quantization and a Support Vector Machine (SVM) are used to adaptively assign an optimal weight to each projected image. The similarity between a 3D query model and a 3D object in database is determined by the likeness of their corresponding 2D images associated with optimal weights. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown in the experimental part.