Information sharing between images

A computer-implemented process for obtaining information about an object in an image, comprising:

• acquiring an image containing an object;
• computing information used for matching the object in the acquired image using information in the image itself vice metadata;
• querying a database using the computed information used for matching;
• matching the object in the acquired image to an object in an image in the database using a content-based image retrieval technique with the computed information used for matching wherein the content-based image retrieval technique uses triplets of features wherein each feature triplet is warped into an equilateral triangle in order to match the object in the acquired image to an object in the image in the database, comprising:
• finding features in the acquired image;
• grouping three of the features into a feature triplet;
• computing an affine transformation using two neighboring feature positions for each feature in the feature triplet to warp the feature triplet into an equilateral triangle in canonical space;
• and
• matching each of the features in the feature triplet of the acquired image with features in a feature triplet of the images in the database to identify the object in the images in the database;
• extracting only information about the matched object from the image in the database;
• and
• sending only the extracted information, and not the image in the database, to a client.

A system for querying a database, comprising:

• a general purpose computing device;
• a computer program comprising program modules executable by the general purpose computing device, wherein the computing device is directed by the program modules of the computer program to,
• acquire an image of an object at a client;
• and
• query a database for the object using the acquired image;
• match the object in the acquired image to an object in an image in the database using an object instance recognition technique that automatically recognizes a particular object from a category of objects of the same type by using feature triplets, each comprising three image features, warped into equilateral triangles using an affine transformation, comprising:
• finding features in the acquired image;
• grouping three of the features in the image into a feature triplet;
• computing an affine transformation using two neighboring feature positions for each feature in the feature triplet to warp the feature triplet into an equilateral triangle in canonical space;
• and
• matching each of the features in the feature triplet of the acquired image with features in a feature triplet of the images in the database to identify the object in the images in the database;
• send information about the object in the matched image from the image in the database to a client.