Matching 2-D ellipses to 3D circles with application to vehicle pose identification

Finding the three-dimensional representation of all or a part of a scene from a single two dimensional image is a challenging task. In this paper we propose a method for identifying the pose and location of objects with circular protrusions in three dimensions from a single image and a 3d representation or model of the object of interest. To do this, we present a method for identifying ellipses and their properties quickly and reliably with a novel technique that exploits intensity differences between objects and a geometric technique for matching an ellipse in 2d to a circle in 3d. We apply these techniques to the specific problem of determining the pose and location of vehicles, particularly cars, from a single image. We have achieved excellent pose recovery performance on artificially generated car im-ages and show promising results on real vehicle images. We also make use of the ellipse detection method to identify car wheels from images, with a ver