An Experimental Comparison of Seven Shape Descriptors in the General Shape Analysis Problem

The general shape analysis is a problem similar to the recognition or retrieval of shapes. The most important difference is that the processed object does not have to belong to a base class, but usually is only similar to the template representing the class. The most general information about a shape is here concluded, i.e. how round, elliptical, triangular, etc. it is. Such a problem can occur in applications with few general base classes, e.g. in pre-classification or the assignment of stamps extracted from an image to few classes in order to find the fraudulent stamp images (mainly governmental, official ones). In the paper seven shape descriptors were explored using the template matching approach. In order to select the best approach their performance was compared with results provided by almost two hundred humans and collected using appropriate inquiry forms.