A new invariant representation for color images and its application

Factors such as shading, shadow, and highlight, observed from object surfaces in a scene, affect seriously the appearance and analysis of the color images. In this paper, we propose a new invariant representation that is derived from the standard dichromatic reflection model for inhomogeneous dielectric and the extended dichromatic reflection model for homogeneous metal. The illumination color is estimated from the specular reflection component on inhomogeneous surfaces without using a reference white standard. The overall performance of the proposed invariant representation is examined in experiments using real-world objects including metals and dielectrics. The feasibility of effective edge detection is introduced and compared with the state-of-the-art invariant methods.