  Most image instance retrieval pipelines are based on comparison of vectors
known as global image descriptors between a query image and the database
images. Due to their success in large scale image classification,
representations extracted from Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are quickly
gaining ground on Fisher Vectors (FVs) as state-of-the-art global descriptors
for image instance retrieval. While CNN-based descriptors are generally
remarked for good retrieval performance at lower bitrates, they nevertheless
present a number of drawbacks including the lack of robustness to common object
transformations such as rotations compared with their interest point based FV
counterparts.
  In this paper, we propose a method for computing invariant global descriptors
from CNNs. Our method implements a recently proposed mathematical theory for
invariance in a sensory cortex modeled as a feedforward neural network. The
resulting global descriptors can be made invariant to multiple arbitrary
transformation groups while retaining good discriminativeness.
  Based on a thorough empirical evaluation using several publicly available
datasets, we show that our method is able to significantly and consistently
improve retrieval results every time a new type of invariance is incorporated.
We also show that our method which has few parameters is not prone to
overfitting: improvements generalize well across datasets with different
properties with regard to invariances. Finally, we show that our descriptors
are able to compare favourably to other state-of-the-art compact descriptors in
similar bitranges, exceeding the highest retrieval results reported in the
literature on some datasets. A dedicated dimensionality reduction step
--quantization or hashing-- may be able to further improve the competitiveness
of the descriptors.
