# Soft Expectation and Deep Maximization for Image Feature Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.10291 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10291/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Apr 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6114/) (2013)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [NetVLAD: CNN architecture for weakly supervised place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07247/) (2015)
- [MegaDepth: Learning Single-View Depth Prediction from Internet Photos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00607/) (2018)
- [From Coarse to Fine: Robust Hierarchical Localization at Large Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03506/) (2018)
- [BlendedMVS: A Large-scale Dataset for Generalized Multi-view Stereo Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10127/) (2019)
- [Hands-on Bayesian Neural Networks -- a Tutorial for Deep Learning Users](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.06823/) (2020)
- [DISK: Learning local features with policy gradient](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13566/) (2020)
- [LIFT: Learned Invariant Feature Transform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09114/) (2016)
- [HPatches: A benchmark and evaluation of handcrafted and learned local descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.05939/) (2017)
- [Image Matching across Wide Baselines: From Paper to Practice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01587/) (2020)
- [Working hard to know your neighbor's margins: Local descriptor learning loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.10872/) (2017)
- [R2D2: Repeatable and Reliable Detector and Descriptor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06195/) (2019)
- [LF-Net: Learning Local Features from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.09662/) (2018)
- [ASLFeat: Learning Local Features of Accurate Shape and Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10071/) (2020)
- [Key.Net: Keypoint Detection by Handcrafted and Learned CNN Filters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00889/) (2019)
- [Robust Image Retrieval-based Visual Localization using Kapture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.13867/) (2020)
- [TILDE: A Temporally Invariant Learned DEtector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4568/) (2014)
- [Reinforced Feature Points: Optimizing Feature Detection and Description for a High-Level Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00623/) (2019)
- [Quad-networks: unsupervised learning to rank for interest point detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07571/) (2016)
- [Learning Covariant Feature Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.01224/) (2016)
- [UnsuperPoint: End-to-end Unsupervised Interest Point Detector and Descriptor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04011/) (2019)
- [UR2KiD: Unifying Retrieval, Keypoint Detection, and Keypoint Description without Local Correspondence Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07252/) (2020)
- [Visual Localization Using Semantic Segmentation and Depth Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11922/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Central to the application of many multi-view geometry algorithms is the extraction of matching points between multiple viewpoints, enabling classical tasks such as camera pose estimation and 3D reconstruction. Many approaches that characterize these points have been proposed based on hand-tuned appearance models or data-driven learning methods. We propose Soft Expectation and Deep Maximization (SEDM), an iterative unsupervised learning process that directly optimizes the repeatability of the features by posing the problem in a similar way to expectation maximization (EM). We found convergence to be reliable and the new model to be more lighting invariant and better at localize the underlying 3D points in a scene, improving SfM quality when compared to other state of the art deep learning detectors.