Abstract: Feature Detection and Feature Description are clearly nowadays topics. Many Computer Vision applications rely on the use of several of these techniques in order to extract the most significant aspects of an image so they can help in some tasks such as image retrieval, image registration, object recognition, object categorization and texture classification, among others. In this paper we define what Feature Detection and Description are and then we present an extensive collection of several methods in order to show the different techniques that are being used right now. The aim of this report is to provide a glimpse of what is being used currently in these fields and to serve as a starting point for future endeavours.

Abstract: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune inflammatory type of arthritis which mainly affects hands on its first stages. Though it is a chronic disease and there is no cure for it, treatments require an accurate assessment of illness evolution. Such assessment is based on evaluation of hand X-ray images by using one of the several available semi-quantitative methods. This task requires highly trained medical personnel. That is why the automation of the assessment would allow professionals to save time and effort. Two stages are involved in this task. Firstly, the joint detection, afterwards, the joint characterization. Unlike the little existing previous work, this contribution clearly separates those two stages and sets the foundations of a modular assessment system focusing on the characterization stage. A hand joint dataset is created and an accurate data analysis is achieved in order to identify relevant features. Since the sclerosis and the lower bone were decided to be the most important features, different computer vision techniques were used in order to develop a detector system for both of them. Joint space width measures are provided and their correlation with Sharp-Van der Heijde is verified