Corners-based composite descriptor for shapes

In this paper, a composite descriptor for shape retrieval is proposed. The composite descriptor is obtained based upon corner-points and shape region. In an earlier paper, we proposed a composite descriptor based on shape region and shape contour, however, the descriptor was not effective for all perspective and geometric transformations. Hence, we modify the composite descriptor by replacing contour features with corner-points features. The proposed descriptor is obtained from Generic FourierDescriptors (GFD) of the shape region and the GFD ofthe corner-points. We study the performance of the proposed composite descriptor. The proposed method is evaluated using Item S8 within the MPEG-7 Still Images Content Set. Experimental results show that the proposed descriptor is effective.<br /

Using contour information and segmentation for object registration, modeling and retrieval

This thesis considers different aspects of the utilization of contour information and syntactic and semantic image segmentation for object registration, modeling and retrieval in the context of content-based indexing and retrieval in large collections of images. Target applications include retrieval in collections of closed silhouettes, holistic w ord recognition in handwritten historical manuscripts and shape registration. Also, the thesis explores the feasibility of contour-based syntactic features for improving the correspondence of the output of bottom-up segmentation to semantic objects present in the scene and discusses the feasibility of different strategies for image analysis utilizing contour information, e.g. segmentation driven by visual features versus segmentation driven by shape models or semi-automatic in selected application scenarios. There are three contributions in this thesis. The first contribution considers structure analysis based on the shape and spatial configuration of image regions (socalled syntactic visual features) and their utilization for automatic image segmentation. The second contribution is the study of novel shape features, matching algorithms and similarity measures. Various applications of the proposed solutions are presented throughout the thesis providing the basis for the third contribution which is a discussion of the feasibility of different recognition strategies utilizing contour information. In each case, the performance and generality of the proposed approach has been analyzed based on extensive rigorous experimentation using as large as possible test collections

Perceptually Motivated Shape Context Which Uses Shape Interiors

In this paper, we identify some of the limitations of current-day shape matching techniques. We provide examples of how contour-based shape matching techniques cannot provide a good match for certain visually similar shapes. To overcome this limitation, we propose a perceptually motivated variant of the well-known shape context descriptor. We identify that the interior properties of the shape play an important role in object recognition and develop a descriptor that captures these interior properties. We show that our method can easily be augmented with any other shape matching algorithm. We also show from our experiments that the use of our descriptor can significantly improve the retrieval rates

Contour matching using ant colony optimization and curve evolution

Shape retrieval is a very important topic in computer vision. Image retrieval consists of selecting images that fulfil specific criteria from a collection of images. This thesis concentrates on contour-based image retrieval, in which we only explore the information located on the shape contour. There are many different kinds of shape retrieval methods. Most of the research in this field has till now concentrated on matching methods and how to achieve a meaningful correspondence. The matching process consist of finding correspondence between the points located on the designed contours. However, the huge number of incorporated points in the correspondence makes the matching process more complex. Furthermore, this scheme does not support computation of the correspondence intuitively without considering noise effect and distortions. Hence, heuristics methods are convoked to find acceptable solution. Moreover, some researches focus on improving polygonal modelling methods of a contour in such a way that the resulted contour is a good approximation of the original contour, which can be used to reduce the number of incorporated points in the matching. In this thesis, a novel approach for Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) contour matching that can be used to find an acceptable matching between contour shapes is developed. A polygonal evolution method proposed previously is selected to simplify the extracted contour. The main reason behind selecting this method is due to the use of a stopping criterion which must be predetermined. The match process is formulated as a Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) and resolved by using ACO. An approximated similarity is computed using original shape context descriptor and the Euclidean metric. The experimental results justify that the proposed approach is invariant to noise and distortions, and it is more robust to noise and distortion compared to the previously introduced Dominant Point (DP) Approach. This work serves as the fundamental study for assessing the Bender Test to diagnose dyslexic and non-dyslexic symptom in children

Contour Based 3D Biological Image Reconstruction and Partial Retrieval

Image segmentation is one of the most difficult tasks in image processing. Segmentation algorithms are generally based on searching a region where pixels share similar gray level intensity and satisfy a set of defined criteria. However, the segmented region cannot be used directly for partial image retrieval. In this dissertation, a Contour Based Image Structure (CBIS) model is introduced. In this model, images are divided into several objects defined by their bounding contours. The bounding contour structure allows individual object extraction, and partial object matching and retrieval from a standard CBIS image structure. The CBIS model allows the representation of 3D objects by their bounding contours which is suitable for parallel implementation particularly when extracting contour features and matching them for 3D images require heavy computations. This computational burden becomes worse for images with high resolution and large contour density. In this essence we designed two parallel algorithms; Contour Parallelization Algorithm (CPA) and Partial Retrieval Parallelization Algorithm (PRPA). Both algorithms have considerably improved the performance of CBIS for both contour shape matching as well as partial image retrieval. To improve the effectiveness of CBIS in segmenting images with inhomogeneous backgrounds we used the phase congruency invariant features of Fourier transform components to highlight boundaries of objects prior to extracting their contours. The contour matching process has also been improved by constructing a fuzzy contour matching system that allows unbiased matching decisions. Further improvements have been achieved through the use of a contour tailored Fourier descriptor to make translation and rotation invariance. It is proved to be suitable for general contour shape matching where translation, rotation, and scaling invariance are required. For those images which are hard to be classified by object contours such as bacterial images, we define a multi-level cosine transform to extract their texture features for image classification. The low frequency Discrete Cosine Transform coefficients and Zenike moments derived from images are trained by Support Vector Machine (SVM) to generate multiple classifiers

Multi-view 3D retrieval using silhouette intersection and multi-scale contour representation

We describe in this paper two methods for 3D shape indexing and retrieval that we apply on two data collections of the SHREC - SHape Retrieval Contest 2007: Watertight models and 3D CAD models. Both methods are based on a set of 2D multi-views after a pose and scale normalization of the models using PCA and the enclosing sphere. In all views we extract the models silhouettes and compare them pairwise. In the first method the similitude measure is obtained by integrating on the pairs of views the difference between the areas of the silhouettes union and the silhouettes intersection. In the second method we consider the external contour of the silhouettes, extract their convexities and concavities at different scale levels and build a multiscale representation. The pairs of contours are then compared by elastic matching achieved by using dynamic programming. Comparisons of the two methods are shown with their respective strengths and weaknesses

On the Dynamic Time Warping of Cyclic Sequences for Shape Retrieval

In the last years, in shape retrieval, methods based on Dynamic Time Warping and sequences where each point of the contour is represented by elements of several dimensions have had a significant presence. In this approach each point of the closed contour contains information with respect to the other ones, this global information is very discriminant. The current state-of-the-art shape retrieval is based on the analysis of these distances to learn better ones. These methods are robust to noise and invariant to transformations, but, they obtain the invariance to the starting point with a brute force cyclic alignment which has a high computational time. In this work, we present the Cyclic Dynamic Time Warping. It can obtain the cyclic alignment in O(n2 log n) time, where n is the size of both sequences. Experimental results show that our proposal is a better alternative than the brute force cyclic alignment and other heuristics for obtaining this invariance

Efficient contour-based shape representation and matching

This paper presents an efficient method for calculating the similarity between 2D closed shape contours. The proposed algorithm is invariant to translation, scale change and rotation. It can be used for database retrieval or for detecting regions with a particular shape in video sequences. The proposed algorithm is suitable for real-time applications. In the first stage of the algorithm, an ordered sequence of contour points approximating the shapes is extracted from the input binary images. The contours are translation and scale-size normalized, and small sets of the most likely starting points for both shapes are extracted. In the second stage, the starting points from both shapes are assigned into pairs and rotation alignment is performed. The dissimilarity measure is based on the geometrical distances between corresponding contour points. A fast sub-optimal method for solving the correspondence problem between contour points from two shapes is proposed. The dissimilarity measure is calculated for each pair of starting points. The lowest dissimilarity is taken as the final dissimilarity measure between two shapes. Three different experiments are carried out using the proposed approach: letter recognition using a web camera, our own simulation of Part B of the MPEG-7 core experiment “CE-Shape1” and detection of characters in cartoon video sequences. Results indicate that the proposed dissimilarity measure is aligned with human intuition

Multi-Technique Fusion for Shape-Based Image Retrieval

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is still in its early stages, although several attempts have been made to solve or minimize challenges associated with it. CBIR techniques use such visual contents as color, texture, and shape to represent and index images. Of these, shapes contain richer information than color or texture. However, retrieval based on shape contents remains more difficult than that based on color or texture due to the diversity of shapes and the natural occurrence of shape transformations such as deformation, scaling and orientation. This thesis presents an approach for fusing several shape-based image retrieval techniques for the purpose of achieving reliable and accurate retrieval performance. An extensive investigation of notable existing shape descriptors is reported. Two new shape descriptors have been proposed as means to overcome limitations of current shape descriptors. The first descriptor is based on a novel shape signature that includes corner information in order to enhance the performance of shape retrieval techniques that use Fourier descriptors. The second descriptor is based on the curvature of the shape contour. This invariant descriptor takes an unconventional view of the curvature-scale-space map of a contour by treating it as a 2-D binary image. The descriptor is then derived from the 2-D Fourier transform of the 2-D binary image. This technique allows the descriptor to capture the detailed dynamics of the curvature of the shape and enhances the efficiency of the shape-matching process. Several experiments have been conducted in order to compare the proposed descriptors with several notable descriptors. The new descriptors not only speed up the online matching process, but also lead to improved retrieval accuracy. The complexity and variety of the content of real images make it impossible for a particular choice of descriptor to be effective for all types of images. Therefore, a data- fusion formulation based on a team consensus approach is proposed as a means of achieving high accuracy performance. In this approach a select set of retrieval techniques form a team. Members of the team exchange information so as to complement each other’s assessment of a database image candidate as a match to query images. Several experiments have been conducted based on the MPEG-7 contour-shape databases; the results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed fusion scheme is superior to that achieved by any technique individually