A modal framework for correspondence and description

The authors describe a framework for establishing correspondence, computing canonical descriptions, and recognizing objects that is based on the idea of describing objects by their generalized symmetries, as defined by the object´s free vibration modes. A technique given by A. Pentland and S. Scarloff (1991) described objects in terms of the modes of some prototype shape. In contrast, this new method computes the object´s modes directly from available image information. This results in greater generality and accuracy, and is applicable to data of any dimensionality. For the purposes of illustration, a detailed mathematical formulation of the method is given for 2-D problems, and it is demonstrated on gray-scale image and contour data