Introducing the Φ-Descriptor - A Most Versatile Relative Position Descriptor

Spatial prepositions, like above, inside, near, denote spatial relationships. A relative position descriptor is a basis from which quantitative models of spatial relationships can be derived. It is an image descriptor, like colour, texture, and shape descriptors. Various relative position descriptors can be found in the literature. In this paper, we introduce a new relative position descriptorthe -descriptorthat has about all the strengths of each and every one of its competitors, and none of the weaknesses. Our approach is based on the concept of the F-histogram and on an original categorization of pairs of consecutive boundary points on a line.