Point pattern matching and applications-a review

Feature-based methods in vision analysis often encounter the problem of correspondences between features of two related patterns. The features may be points, lines, curves and surfaces/regions. Point pattern matching (PPM) is a primary and essential approach for establishing a correspondence within two related patterns. Applications exist in wide circumstances. Numerous techniques related to PPM have been studied within a rich and extensive literature, encompassing both theoretical and practical problem domains. In this paper, we provide a review of the PPM techniques and their applications from three aspects: 1) PPM under rigid/affine motion, 2) PPM under non-rigid/elastic motion, and 3) PPM in a dynamic sequence. We also anticipate the trend for the future in adapting existing techniques to novel algorithms for non-rigid PPM.