Advertisement
Published in:
2016 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Fourier Shape Descriptors
Authors : Wilhelm Burger, Mark J. Burge
Published in: Digital Image Processing
Publisher: Springer London
Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.
Select sections of text to find matching patents with Artificial Intelligence. powered by
Select sections of text to find additional relevant content using AI-assisted search. powered by
Fourier descriptors are an interesting method for modeling 2D shapes that are described as closed contours. Unlike polylines or splines, which are explicit and local descriptions of the contour, Fourier descriptors are global shape representations, that is, each component stands for a particular characteristic of the entire shape. If one component is changed, the whole shape will change. The advantage is that it is possible to capture coarse shape properties with only a few numeric values, and the level of detail can be increased (or decreased) by adding (or removing) descriptor elements. In the following, we describe what is called “cartesian” (or “elliptical”) Fourier descriptors, how they can be used to model the shape of closed 2D contours and how they can be adapted to compare shapes in a translation-, scale-, and rotation-invariant fashion.