Bitmap compare method on the iPhone (unity3d)

Question

Hi. What would be the best method to compare 2 bitmaps and get the correlation between the 2 (0 being completely different and 1 being exactly the same) in Unity3d on the iPhone? I am using C# since documentation says that using Boo or UnityScript will increase the size of the application.

What I need is something similar to the fingerprint identification methods but not as accurate. Since this is intended to run on the iPhone performance is a big issue here.

Example images:

For those I would expect to have a correlation factor of about 0.5 since they are similar but differ in color. There are a number of different dimensions of comparison, but the basic ones are color and shape.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

To answer (sort of) my own question, after days of googling, I found this. The basic idea is to test for images with offset/rotation, the search for a dominant color and so on. So far this is the best information I could find, so I will give it a try.

The code suggested there looks like this:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Drawing.Imaging;
using System.IO;

namespace BitmapSimilarity
{
    public interface IBitmapCompare
    {
        double GetSimilarity(Bitmap a, Bitmap b);
    }

    class BitmapCompare: IBitmapCompare
    {
        public struct RGBdata
        {
            public int r;
            public int g;
            public int b;

            public int GetLargest()
            {
                if(r>b)
                {
                    if(r>g)
                    {
                        return 1;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        return 2;
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    return 3;
                }
            }
        }

        private RGBdata ProcessBitmap(Bitmap a)
        {
            BitmapData bmpData = a.LockBits(new Rectangle(0,0,a.Width,a.Height),ImageLockMode.ReadOnly,PixelFormat.Format24bppRgb);
            IntPtr ptr = bmpData.Scan0;
            RGBdata data = new RGBdata();

            unsafe
            {
                byte* p = (byte*)(void*)ptr;
                int offset = bmpData.Stride - a.Width * 3;
                int width = a.Width * 3;

                for (int y = 0; y < a.Height; ++y)
                {
                    for (int x = 0; x < width; ++x)
                    {
                        data.r += p[0];             //gets red values
                        data.g += p[1];             //gets green values
                        data.b += p[2];             //gets blue values
                        ++p;
                    }
                    p += offset;
                }
            }
            a.UnlockBits(bmpData);
            return data;
        }

        public double GetSimilarity(Bitmap a, Bitmap b)
        {
            RGBdata dataA = ProcessBitmap(a);
            RGBdata dataB = ProcessBitmap(b);
            double result = 0;
            int averageA = 0;
            int averageB = 0;
            int maxA = 0;
            int maxB = 0;

            maxA = ((a.Width * 3) * a.Height);
            maxB = ((b.Width * 3) * b.Height);

            switch (dataA.GetLargest())            //Find dominant color to compare
            {
                case 1:
                    {
                        averageA = Math.Abs(dataA.r / maxA);
                        averageB = Math.Abs(dataB.r / maxB);
                        result = (averageA - averageB) / 2;
                        break;
                    }
                case 2:
                    {
                        averageA = Math.Abs(dataA.g / maxA);
                        averageB = Math.Abs(dataB.g / maxB);
                        result = (averageA - averageB) / 2;
                        break;
                    }
                case 3:
                    {
                        averageA = Math.Abs(dataA.b / maxA);
                        averageB = Math.Abs(dataB.b / maxB);
                        result = (averageA - averageB) / 2;
                        break;
                    }
            }

            result = Math.Abs((result + 100) / 100);

            if (result > 1.0)
            {
                result -= 1.0;
            }

            return result;
        }
    }

    class Program
    {
        static BitmapCompare SimpleCompare;
        static Bitmap searchImage;

        static private void Line()
        {
            for (int x = 0; x < Console.BufferWidth; x++)
            {
                Console.Write("*");
            }
        }

        static void CheckDirectory(string directory,double percentage,Bitmap sImage)
        {
            DirectoryInfo dir = new DirectoryInfo(directory);
            FileInfo[] files = null;
            try
            {
                files = dir.GetFiles("*.jpg");
            }
            catch (DirectoryNotFoundException)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Bad directory specified");
                return;
            }

            double sim = 0;

            foreach (FileInfo f in files)
            {
                sim = Math.Round(SimpleCompare.GetSimilarity(sImage, new Bitmap(f.FullName)),3);
                if (sim >= percentage)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(f.Name);
                    Console.WriteLine("Match of: {0}", sim);
                    Line(); 
                }
            }
        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            SimpleCompare = new BitmapCompare();
            Console.Write("Enter path to search image: ");
            try
            {
                searchImage = new Bitmap(Console.ReadLine());
            }
            catch (ArgumentException)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Bad file");
                return;
            }

            Console.Write("Enter directory to scan: ");
            string dir = Console.ReadLine();
            Line();
            CheckDirectory(dir, 0.95 , searchImage);        //Display only images that match by 95%
        }
    }
}