MATCHING AN APPROXIMATELY LOCATED QUERY IMAGE AGAINST A REFERENCE IMAGE SET

摘要

Aspects of the invention pertain to matching a selected image/photograph against a database of reference images (324) having location information. The image of interest may include some location information itself, such as latitude/longitude coordinates and orientation. However, the location information provided by a user's device (308, 310, 312) may be inaccurate or incomplete. The image of interest is provided to a front end server (502), which selects one or more cells (452, 454, 456) to match the image against. Each cell may have multiple images and an index. One or more cell match servers (504) compare the image against specific cells based on information provided by the front end server. An index storage server (506) maintains index data for the cells and provides them to the cell match servers. If a match is found, the front end server identifies the correct location and orientation of the received image, and may correct errors in an estimated location of the user device.