A new approach for partial matching of contours

A new approach for the partial matching of contours is presented. This approach is based on the curvature function of the processed contours, so it is naturally translation-, rotation- and scale-invariant. Unlike most existing contour matching methods, which decompose the processed contour into sequences of elements, this method establishes a hierarchical structure to describe the curvature function, then a top-down matching algorithm is used to complete the match. In the design of the algorithm and the data structure for implementing the hierarchical description of curvature functions, special measures are adopted to reduce the influence of noise on curve function decomposition and to make the approach robust. Experimental results are given which show that this approach is very effective. When it is applied to various partially occluded objects, this approach can find a good partial match.<>