Shape Based Image Retrieval Using Generic Fourier Descriptors

Dengsheng Zhang and Guojun Lu
Gippsland School of Computing and Information Technology
Monash University
Churchill, Victoria 3842
Australia

Tel: 61-3-9902 6772
Fax: 61-3-9902 6842
Email: dengsheng.zhang, guojun.lu@infotech.monash.edu.au

ABSTRACT

Shape description composes one of the key parts of image content description in MPEG-7. Most of existing shape descriptors are usually either application dependent or non-robust, making them undesirable for generic shape description. In this paper, a generic Fourier descriptor (GFD) is proposed to overcome the drawbacks of existing shape representation techniques. The proposed shape descriptor is derived by applying 2-D Fourier transform on a polar shape image. The acquired shape descriptor is application independent and robust. Experimental results show the GFD outperforms common contour-based and region-based shape descriptors.

Key words:Fourier descriptors, shape, CBIR, retrieval.