The joint effect of image blur and illumination distortions for Mobile Visual Search of print media

Mobile Visual Search (MVS) is an emerging area of research given the explosion of smart and powerful mobile devices. Typically, the performance of MVS applications is influenced by the implemented image processing algorithms as well as various distortions that occur when capturing images by the mobile camera. This paper examines the joint effect of two common distortions, namely the illumination changes and image blurring on image matching accuracy for print media when using four state-of-the art local feature algorithms. Results obtained for a database of real camera images captured by two different camera models show that the illumination changes have a more negative effect on matching accuracy compared to image blurring and this influence is camera-dependent.