Does anyone know of an algorithm (or search terms / descriptions) to locate a known image within a larger image?
e.g.
I have an image of a single desktop window containing various buttons and areas (target). I also have code to capture a screen shot of the current desktop. I would like an algorithm that will help me find the target image within the larger desktop image (what exact x and y coordinates the window is located at). The target image may be located anywhere in the larger image and may not be 100% exactly the same (very similar but not exact possibly b/c of OS display differences)
Does anyone know of such an algorithm or class of algorithms?
I have found various image segmentation and computer vision algorithms but they seem geared to ‘fuzzy’ classification of regions and not locating a specific image within another.
** My goal is to create a framework that, given some seed target images, can find ‘look’ at the desktop, find the target area and ‘watch’ it for changes. **
You said your image may not be exactly the same, but then say you don’t want ‘fuzzy’ algorithms. I’m not sure those are compatible. In general, though, I think you want to look at image registration algorithms. There’s an open source C++ package called ITK that might provide some hints. Also ImageJ is a popular open source Java package. Both of these have at least some registration capabilities available if you poke around.