Review of shape representation and description techniques

This paper introduces a new set of orthogonal moment functions based on the discrete Tchebichef polynomials. The Tchebichef moments can be effectively used as pattern features in the analysis of two-dimensional images. The implementation of the moments proposed in this paper does not involve any numerical approximation, since the basis set is orthogonal in the discrete domain of the image coordinate space. This property makes Tchebichef moments superior to the conventional orthogonal moments such as Legendre moments and Zernike moments, in terms of preserving the analytical properties needed to ensure information redundancy in a moment set. The paper also details the various computational aspects of Tchebichef moments and demonstrates their feature representation capability using the method of image reconstruction.

Image analysis by Tchebichef moments

Zeros of orthogonal polynomials

A new set of orthogonal moments based on the discrete classical Krawtchouk polynomials is introduced. The Krawtchouk polynomials are scaled to ensure numerical stability, thus creating a set of weighted Krawtchouk polynomials. The set of proposed Krawtchouk moments is then derived from the weighted Krawtchouk polynomials. The orthogonality of the proposed moments ensures minimal information redundancy. No numerical approximation is involved in deriving the moments, since the weighted Krawtchouk polynomials are discrete. These properties make the Krawtchouk moments well suited as pattern features in the analysis of two-dimensional images. It is shown that the Krawtchouk moments can be employed to extract local features of an image, unlike other orthogonal moments, which generally capture the global features. The computational aspects of the moments using the recursive and symmetry properties are discussed. The theoretical framework is validated by an experiment on image reconstruction using Krawtchouk moments and the results are compared to that of Zernike, pseudo-Zernike, Legendre, and Tchebyscheff moments. Krawtchouk moment invariants are constructed using a linear combination of geometric moment invariants; an object recognition experiment shows Krawtchouk moment invariants perform significantly better than Hu's moment invariants in both noise-free and noisy conditions.

Image analysis by Krawtchouk moments

Shape description is one of the key parts of image content description for image retrieval. Most of the 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 two-dimensional Fourier transform on a polar-raster sampled shape image. The acquired shape descriptor is application independent and robust. Experimental results show that the proposed GFD outperforms common contour-based and region-based shape descriptors.

Shape-based image retrieval using generic Fourier descriptor

Image analysis by moments

Research has been performed investigating the use of moments for pattern recognition in recent years. The basic problem of the influence of discretization and noise on moment accuracy as object descriptors, has been barely investigated. In this paper, the detailed error analysis involved in the moment method is discussed. Several new techniques to increase the accuracy and efficiency of moment descriptor are proposed. We utilize these results for the problem of image reconstruction from the orthogonal Legendre moments computed from discrete and noisy data. The automatic selection of an optimal number of moments is also discussed.

On image analysis by moments

We give a detailed analysis of the accuracy of Zernike moments in terms of their discretization errors and the reconstruction power. It is found that there is an inherent limitation in the precision of computing the Zernike moments due to the geometric nature of a circular domain. This is explained by relating the accuracy issue to a celebrated problem in analytic number theory of evaluating the lattice points within a circle.

On the accuracy of Zernike moments for image analysis

An algorithm for high-precision numerical computation of Zernike moments is presented. The algorithm, based on the introduced polar pixel tiling scheme, does not exhibit the geometric error and numerical integration error which are inherent in conventional methods based on Cartesian coordinates. This yields a dramatic improvement of the Zernike moments accuracy in terms of their reconstruction and invariance properties. The introduced image tiling requires an interpolation algorithm which turns out to be of the second order importance compared to the discretization error. Various comparisons are made between the accuracy of the proposed method and that of commonly used techniques. The results reveal the great advantage of our approach

Simon Liao

Papers

Image analysis by moments

On image analysis by moments

On the accuracy of Zernike moments for image analysis

Accurate Computation of Zernike Moments in Polar Coordinates

Circularly orthogonal moments for geometrically robust image watermarking