A new method for representing and matching shapes of natural objects

A new method for the representation and comparison of irregular two-dimensional shapes is presented. This method uses a polar transformation of the contour points about the geometric centre of the object. The distinctive vertices of the shape are extracted and used as comparative parameters to minimize the difference of contour distance from the centre. Experiments are performed, more than 39 000 comparisons of database shapes, provided by Sebastian et al. (ICCV (2001) 755), are made and the results are compared to those obtained therein. In addition, 450 comparisons of leaf shape are made and leaves of very similar shape are accurately distinguished. The method is shown to be invariant to translation, rotation and scaling and highly accurate in shape distinction. The method shows more tolerance to scale variation than that of Sebastian et al. (ICCV (2001) 755) and is less computationally intense. (C) 2003 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.