A New Shape Signature for Fourier Descriptors

Shape-based image description is an important approach to content-based image retrieval (CBIR). A variety of techniques are reported in the literature that aim to represent objects based on their shapes; each of these techniques has its advantages and disadvantages. Fourier descriptor (FD), a simple yet powerful technique, has attractive properties such as rotational, scale, and translational invariance. In this paper we investigate this technique and present a novel shape registration method for extracting Fourier descriptors. When evaluated against curvature scale space (CSS) and Zernike moments (ZM) in shape-based image retrieval, the proposed technique exhibits superior performance.