Systems and method are provided for detecting key-points in at least one image which involves dividing the at least one image into a plurality of image blocks; determining sparse representations of the image blocks using a dictionary D; determining at least one measure for each of the sparse representations of the image block; optionally determining key-points for which the at least one measure for each of the image blocks falls within a specified range; and retaining only the determined key-points with the at least one measure that is a local maxima in a sliding window when performing non-maxima suppression and identifying these retained key-points as detected key-points. In accordance with further teachings provided herein, there is also provided methods and systems for performing scale and/or rotation invariant sparse coding based key-point (SRI-SCK) detection and processing of images.