Gauss-SIFT is a pure image descriptor defined by performing all image measurements underlying the pure image descriptor in SIFT by Gaussian derivative responses as opposed to derivative approximations in an image pyramid as done in regular SIFT. In this way, discretization effects over space and scale can be reduced to a minimum allowing for potentially more accurate image descriptors. In Lindeberg (2015) such pure Gauss-SIFT image descriptors were combined with a set of generalized scale-space interest points comprising the Laplacian of the Gaussian, the determinant of the Hessian, four new unsigned or signed Hessian feature strength measures as well as Harris-Laplace and Shi-and-Tomasi interests points. In an extensive experimental evaluation on a poster dataset comprising multiple views of 12 posters over scaling transformations up to a factor of 6 and viewing direction variations up to a slant angle of 45 degrees, it was shown that substantial increase in performance of image matching (higher efficiency scores and lower 1-precision scores) could be obtained by replacing Laplacian of Gaussian interest points by determinant of the Hessian interest points. Since difference-of-Gaussians interest points constitute a numerical approximation of Laplacian of the Gaussian interest points, this shows that a substantial increase in matching performance is possible by replacing the difference-of-Gaussians interest points in SIFT by determinant of the Hessian interest points. Additional increase in performance can furthermore be obtained by considering the unsigned Hessian feature strength measure formula_54. A quantitative comparison between the Gauss-SIFT descriptor and a corresponding Gauss-SURF descriptor did also show that Gauss-SIFT does generally perform significantly better than Gauss-SURF for a large number of different scale-space interest point detectors. This study therefore shows that discregarding discretization effects the pure image descriptor in SIFT is significantly better than the pure image descriptor in SURF, whereas the underlying interest point detector in SURF, which can be seen as numerical approximation to scale-space extrema of the determinant of the Hessian, is significantly better than the underlying interest point detector in SIFT.