FU Bo; LIU Ling-yun; QUAN Yi; ZHANG Guo-jun; LIU Jin
The paper proposes a modified q-recursive algorithm of fast computing Zernike moments. The method improves the efficiency of calculating Zernike moments by reducing the computational complexities of the Zernike polynomials and the Fourier functions of the kernel functions. In the first step, the q-recursive method, which avoids the factorial operations and the power series of radius involved in radial polynomials, is employed to compute the Zernike polynomials. In the second step, the image domain is divided into eight equal parts by four lines, which are x=0, y=0, x=y and x=-y. On computing Zernike moments, the kernel functions are merely calculated in one part. The function values of the other parts can be obtained by the symmetry property about the four lines of the kernel functions. It not only saves the storages for the kernel polynomials but also reduces the computation time. The performance of the algorithm is experimentally examined using a binary image, and it shows that the computational speed of Zernike moments has been substantially improved over the present methods.