Piecewise approximation of curves using nonlinear diffusion in scale-space

The emerging Multimedia Content Description Interface standard, MPEG-7, looks at the indexing and retrieval of visual information. In this context the development of shape description and shape querying tools become a fundamental and challenging task. We introduce a method based on non-linear diffusion of contours. The aim is to compute reference points in contours to provide a shape description tool. This reference points will be situated in the sharpest changes in the contour direction. Hence, they provide ideal choices to use as vertices of a polygonal approximation. If a maximum error between the original contour and the polygonal approximation is required, a scale-space procedure can help to find new vertices in order to meet this requirement. Basically, this method follows the non-linear diffusion technique of Perona and Malik. Unlike the usually linear diffusion techniques of contours, where the diffusion is made through the contour points coordinates, this method applies the diffusion in the tangent space. In this case the contour is described by the angle variation, and the non-linear diffusion procedure is applied on it. Perona and Malik model determines how strong diffusion will act on the original function, and depends of a factor K, estimated automatically. In areas with spatial concentration of strong changes of the angle this factor is also adjusted to reduce the noise effect. The proposed method has been extensively tested using the data- base contour of fish shapes in SQUID web site. A shape-based retrieval application was also tested using a similarity measure between two polygonal approximations.