Pattern Recognition for Classification and Matching of Car Tires

Commercial databases containing images of tire tread patterns are currently used by product designers, forensic specialists and product application personnel to identify whether a given tread pattern matches an existing tire. Currently, this pattern matching process is almost entirely manual, requiring visual searches of extensive libraries of tire tread patterns. Our work explores a first step toward automating this pattern matching process by building on feature analysis techniques from computer vision and image processing to develop a new method for extracting and classifying features from tire tread patterns and automatically locating candidate matches from a database of existing tread pattern images. Our method begins with a selection of tire tread images obtained from multiple sources (including manufacturers' literature, Web site images, and Tire Guides, Inc.), which are preprocessed and normalized using Two-Dimensional Fast Fourier Transforms (2D-FFT). The results of this preprocessing are feature-rich images that are further analyzed using feature extraction algorithms drawn from research in computer vision. A new, feature extraction algorithm is developed based on the geometry of the 2D-FFT images of the tire. The resulting FFT-based analysis allows independent classification of the tire images along two dimensions, specifically by separating “rib” and “lug” features of the tread pattern. Dimensionality of (0,0) indicates a smooth treaded tire with no pattern; dimensionality of (1,0) and (0,1) are purely rib and lug tires; and dimensionality of (1,1) is an all-season pattern. This analysis technique allows a candidate tire to be classified according to the features of its tread pattern, and other tires with similar features and tread pattern classifications can be automatically retrieved from the database.