Object Detection with OpenCV - (2/3) - HOG Feature Vector Calculation

This post part 2 of a series of 3 posts at smsoft-solutions by Saurabh Goyal. To go to the original articles:

1. Object Detection Using opencv I - Integral Histogram for fast Calculation of HOG Features
   
2. Object Detection using opencv II - Calculation of Hog Features
   
3. Object Detection using opencv III - Training an svm for the extracted hog features
   

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This is follow up post to an earlier post where I have described how an integral histogram can be obtained from an image for fast calculation of hog features. Here I am posting the code for how this integral histogram can be used to calculate the hog feature vectors for an image window. I have commented the code for easier understanding of how it works :

/* This function takes in a block as a rectangle and
calculates the hog features for the block by dividing
it into cells of size cell(the supplied parameter),
calculating the hog features for each cell using the
function calculateHOG_rect(...), concatenating the so
obtained vectors for each cell and then normalizing over
the concatenated vector to obtain the hog features for a
block */

void calculateHOG_block(CvRect block, CvMat * hog_block,
   IplImage ** integrals, CvSize cell, int normalization)
{
 int cell_start_x, cell_start_y;
 CvMat vector_cell;
 int startcol = 0;
 for (cell_start_y = block.y; cell_start_y <=
      block.y + block.height - cell.height;
      cell_start_y += cell.height) {
  for (cell_start_x = block.x; cell_start_x <=
       block.x + block.width - cell.width;
       cell_start_x += cell.width) {
   cvGetCols(hog_block, &vector_cell, startcol,
      startcol + 9);

   calculateHOG_rect(cvRect(cell_start_x,
       cell_start_y, cell.width,
       cell.height), &vector_cell,
       integrals, -1);

   startcol += 9;
  }
 }
 if (normalization != -1)
  cvNormalize(hog_block, hog_block, 1, 0, normalization);
}

/* This function takes in a window(64x128 pixels,
but can be easily modified for other window sizes)
and calculates the hog features for the window. It
can be used to calculate the feature vector for a 
64x128 pixel image as well. This window/image is the
training/detection window which is used for training
or on which the final detection is done. The hog
features are computed by dividing the window into
overlapping blocks, calculating the hog vectors for
each block using calculateHOG_block(...) and
concatenating the so obtained vectors to obtain the
hog feature vector for the window*/

CvMat *calculateHOG_window(IplImage ** integrals,
      CvRect window, int normalization)
{

/*A cell size of 8x8 pixels is considered and each
block is divided into 2x2 such cells (i.e. the block
is 16x16 pixels). So a 64x128 pixels window would be
divided into 7x15 overlapping blocks*/

 int block_start_x, block_start_y, cell_width = 8;
 int cell_height = 8;
 int block_width = 2, block_height = 2;

/* The length of the feature vector for a cell is
9(since no. of bins is 9), for block it would  be
9*(no. of cells in the block) = 9*4 = 36. And the
length of the feature vector for a window would be
36*(no. of blocks in the window */

 CvMat *window_feature_vector = cvCreateMat(1,
         ((((window.width -
             cell_width * block_width)
            / cell_width) +
           1) *
          (((window.height -
             cell_height *
             block_height) /
            cell_height)
           + 1)) * 36, CV_32FC1);

 CvMat vector_block;
 int startcol = 0;
 for (block_start_y = window.y; block_start_y
      <= window.y + window.height - cell_height
      * block_height; block_start_y += cell_height) {
  for (block_start_x = window.x; block_start_x
       <= window.x + window.width - cell_width
       * block_width; block_start_x += cell_width) {
   cvGetCols(window_feature_vector, &vector_block,
      startcol, startcol + 36);

   calculateHOG_block(cvRect(block_start_x,
        block_start_y,
        cell_width * block_width,
        cell_height * block_height),
        &vector_block, integrals,
        cvSize(cell_width, cell_height),
        normalization);

   startcol += 36;
  }
 }
 return (window_feature_vector);
}

I will very soon post how a support vector machine (svm) can trained using the above functions for an object using a dataset and how the learned model can be used to detect the corresponding object in an image.