A fast shape retrieval using dendrogram

A lot of image data has been digitized and preserved in computers. In order to search for an image, an efficient and accurate retrieval method is needed. This paper is concerned with shape retrieval which is one of the searching methods for finding similar images in a database. Shape, the outer form of a picture, is considered the most promising feature to identify entities in an image. The problem of shape retrieval takes a lot of time because an exhaustive search is mainly used in literatures. This paper suggests the use of a clustering method known as dendrogram for shape retrieval. In addition, we proposed the automatic decision of a threshold to determine a number of clusters in dendrogram. Through the experimental result, the proposed method proved fast retrieval preserving almost the same level accuracy.