Shape retrieval using triangle-area representation and dynamic space warping

In this paper, we present a shape retrieval method using triangle-area representation for nonrigid shapes with closed contours. The representation utilizes the areas of the triangles formed by the boundary points to measure the convexity/concavity of each point at different scales (or triangle side lengths). This representation is effective in capturing both local and global characteristics of a shape, invariant to translation, rotation, and scaling, and robust against noise and moderate amounts of occlusion. In the matching stage, a dynamic space warping (DSW) algorithm is employed to search efficiently for the optimal (least cost) correspondence between the points of two shapes. Then, a distance is derived based on the optimal correspondence. The performance of our method is demonstrated using four standard tests on two well-known shape databases. The results show the superiority of our method over other recent methods in the literature. (c) 2007 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.