When using the Hough transform, you create a signature storing the displacement vectors of every feature from the template centroid (either (w/2,h/2)
or with the help of central moments).
E.g. for 10 SIFT features found on the template, their relative positions according to template's centroid is a vector<{a,b}>
. Now, let's search for this object in a query image: every SIFT feature found in the query image, matched with one of template's 10, casts a vote to its corresponding centroid.
votemap(feature.x - a*, feature.y - b*)+=1
where a,b corresponds to this particular feature vector.
If some of those features cast successfully at the same point (clustering is essential), you have found an object instance.
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Signature and voting are reverse procedures. Let's assume V=(-20,-10)
. So during searching in the novel image, when the two matches are found, we detect their orientation and size and cast a respective vote. E.g. for the right box centroid will be V'=(+20*0.5*cos(-10),+10*0.5*sin(-10))
away from the SIFT feature because it is in half size and rotated by -10 degrees.