Invariance properties of gabor filter-based features--overview and applications.

For almost three decades the use of features based on Gabor filters has been promoted for their useful properties in image processing. The most important properties are related to invariance to illumination, rotation, scale, and translation. These properties are based on the fact that they are all parameters of Gabor filters themselves. This is especially useful in feature extraction, where Gabor filters have succeeded in many applications, from texture analysis to iris and face recognition. This study provides an overview of Gabor filters in image processing, a short literature survey of the most significant results, and establishes invariance properties and restrictions to the use of Gabor filters in feature extraction. Results are demonstrated by application examples.