DIFFERENTIAL SHAPE STATISTICAL ANALYSIS.

A novel statistical approach that involves differential shape is proposed to analyze contour segments. First, a moment-based algorithm to represent the differential contour segment in an efficient way is introduced. Then, a curvature mean-shift method is adopted to search for the salient features. An optimized function is also developed to segment a contour into parts based on its structural properties. Compared with some other methods used in CSS (Curvature Scale Space) and shock graphs, our method is more powerful for shape contour analysis, especially for the incomplete or occluded contours. Experiments show that our method can track salient parts in real-time and give a judgment of the basic shape properties such as symmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]