Shape Discrimination Using Fourier Descriptors

Description or discrimination of boundary curves (shapes) is an important problem in picture processing and pattern recognition. Fourier descriptors (FD´s) have interesting properties in this respect. First, a critical review is given of two kinds of FD´s. Some properties of the FD´s are given and a distance measure is proposed, in terms of FD´s, that measures the difference between two boundary curves. It is shown how FD´s can be used for obtaining skeletons of objects. Finally, experimental results are given in character recognition and machine parts recognition.