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I've been looking around for some papers (or info) on this topic.

To avoid a misunderstanding: I'm not talking about finding a supplied pattern in multiple locations.

Repeating patterns can also be understood to mean repeating images. The definition of pattern here isn't abstract. Imagine, for instance, a brick wall. The wall is composed of individual bricks. A picture of the wall is composed of the repeating image of a brick.

The solution must preferably find the largest repeating pattern. Large in this context can be defined two ways: pixel area or number of repetitions.

In the above example, you can cut the bricks in half. In order to make a brick, you can rotate a segment and attach the halves. While the complete brick is the largest repeating image in terms of pixel area, there are 2x more repetitions of half blocks.

Any thoughts?

carlosdc
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EthernetCable
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  • I haven't been able to find any previous work. I'm asking the community for either partially or directly-related leads. – EthernetCable Feb 15 '11 at 19:21
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    What you are looking for is Periodic Textures. Please clarify if this periodicity is expected in the image plain or if perspective (or other) transformations are expected. – Adi Shavit Feb 16 '11 at 20:31

2 Answers2

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A number of methods come to mind:

  • Fourier Transformation of the image
  • Wavelet Analysis
  • Autocorrelation

I'd start with fourier analysis: Any shape repeating in a regular pattern in the image creates a very distinct spatial frequency spectrum: One major frequency and some harmonics.

datenwolf
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I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I suggest searching for "Texture based segmentation". Take a look at this bibliography, for example: http://www.visionbib.com/bibliography/segment366.html

Pablo
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