Methods and systems for performing fast, large-scale, localized Bag-of-Features (Local BoF) retrieval are disclosed. In some embodiments, a method may include receiving a query image and ranking each image of a large set of database images as a function of its similarity to the query image with a Local BoF operation. A Local BoF operation may be configured to localize, for each ranked image, a region that has a highest similarity to the query image. As such, the systems and methods described herein may be suitable for use in large-scale image search and retrieval or categorization operations that may identify objects of interest with arbitrary rotations, significantly different viewpoints, in the presence of clutter. In some embodiments, systems and methods described herein may be used as building blocks of various computer vision and image processing applications including, for example, object recognition and categorization, 3D modeling, mapping, navigation, gesture interfaces, etc.