

SIFT Feature Detection library
Copyright (C) 2004, Sebastian Nowozin (nowozin@cs.tu-berlin.de)

Version 1.8 README file


Introduction
============

The SIFT feature detection algorithm has been invented and published by David
Lowe at the University of British Columbia. A detailed account of the complete
algorithm is available at http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~lowe/papers/ijcv03-abs.html

  The algorithm provides the capability to identify key feature points within
arbitrary images. It further extracts highly distinct information for each
such point and allows to characterize the point invariant to a number of
modifications to the image. It is invariant to contrast/brightness changes, to
rotation, scaling and partially invariant to other kinds of transformations.
The algorithm can be flexibly used to create input data for image matching,
object identification and other computer vision related algorithms.

  This package provides an implementation of the SIFT algorithm as library.


License
=======

The license for this package is available in the "LICENSE" file. The SIFT
algorithm is patented in the United States and as such restricted in use. For
details, refer to the LICENSE file.


Installation
============

You need a .NET Framework implementation, I prefer Mono.

    - Mono (http://www.go-mono.com/) 1.0 or later
    - GTK# (http://gtk-sharp.sf.net/) 1.0 or later.
    - GNU make, GNU bash. Under Unix they should be already installed, under
      Windows you might need CygWin (http://www.cygwin.com/)

Sorry about introducing this dependancy-bloat, but I hope in the future every
system will have a .NET Framework installed, preferably mono :). Under
Debian/sid you can install the "mono" and "libgtk-cil" packages.

In the "libsift" package, you can only build the "lib" target:

    make clean lib

You cannot use any other target.


Development
===========

The best starting point to use this library is to download the "autopano-sift"
package, which is available from http://cs.tu-berlin.de/~nowozin/autopano-sift/
It includes a large number of programs using this library. If you have any
questions, please send me email.

Further improved and fixed versions of this package may be available at
http://cs.tu-berlin.de/~nowozin/libsift/

Please send me patches, fixes and comments for this implementation, I would be
glad to hear them. See the TODO file for cues what needs to be improved.


Contact
=======

I can be reached through this email: nowozin@cs.tu-berlin.de



