Maximum-Likelihood Image Classification

An essential feature of a practical automatic image recognition system is the ability to tolerate certain types of variations within images. The recognition of images subject to intrinsic variations can be treated as a sorting task in which an image is identified as a member of some class of images. Herein, the maximum-likelihood strategy, an important tool in the field of statistical decision theory, is applied to the image classification problem. We show that the strategy can be implemented in a standard image correlation system and that excellent classification results can be obtained.