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Similarity Equivariant Linear Transformation of Joint Orientation-Scale Space Representations

Convolution is conventionally defined as a linear operation on functions of one or more variables which commutes with shifts. Group convolution generalizes the concept to linear operations on functions of group elements representing more general geometric transformations and which commute with those transformations. Since similarity transformation is the most general geometric transformation on images that preserves shape, the group convolution that is equivariant to similarity transformation is the most general shape preserving linear operator. Because similarity transformations have four free parameters, group convolutions are defined on four-dimensional, joint orientation-scale spaces. Although prior work on equivariant linear operators has been limited to discrete groups, the similarity group is continuous. In this paper, we describe linear operators on discrete representations that are equivariant to continuous similarity transformation. This is achieved by using a basis of functions that is it joint shiftable-twistable-scalable. These pinwheel functions use Fourier series in the orientation dimension and Laplace transform in the log-scale dimension to form a basis of spatially localized functions that can be continuously interpolated in position, orientation and scale. Although this result is potentially significant with respect to visual computation generally, we present an initial demonstration of its utility by using it to compute a shape equivariant distribution of closed contours traced by particles undergoing Brownian motion in velocity. The contours are constrained by sets of points and line endings representing well known bistable illusory contour inducing patterns.