Histogram of oriented gradients
feature descriptor used in computer vision
The histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) is a feature descriptor used in computer vision and image processing for the purpose of object detection. The technique counts occurrences of gradient orientation in localized portions of an image. This method is similar to that of edge orientation histograms, scale-invariant feature transform descriptors, and shape contexts, but differs in that it is computed on a dense grid of uniformly spaced cells and uses overlapping local contrast normalization for improved accuracy.
Robert K. McConnell of Wayland Research Inc. first described the concepts behind HOG without using the term HOG in a patent application in 1986. In 1994 the concepts were used by Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories. However, usage only became widespread in 2005 when Navneet Dalal and Bill Triggs, researchers for the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA), presented their supplementary work on HOG descriptors at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR). In this work they focused on pedestrian detection in static images, although since then they expanded their tests to include human detection in videos, as well as to a variety of common animals and vehicles in static imagery.
Theory
The essential thought behind the histogram of oriented gradients descriptor is that local object appearance and shape within an image can be described by the distribution of intensity gradients or edge directions. The image is divided into small connected regions called cells, and for the pixels within each cell, a histogram of gradient directions is compiled.
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