Affine-invariant B-spline moments for curve matching

The article deals with the problem of matching and recognizing planar curves that are modeled by B-splines, independently of possible affine transformations to which the original curve has been subjected (for example, rotation, translation, scaling, orthographic, and semiperspective projections), and possible occlusion. It presents a fast algorithm for estimating the B-spline control points that is robust to nonuniform sampling, noise, and local deformations. Curve matching is achieved by using a similarity measure based on the B-spline knot points introduced by Cohen et al. (1991). This method, however, can neither handle the affine transformation between the curves nor the occlusion. Solutions to these two problems are presented through the use of a new class of weighted B-spline curve moments that are well defined for both open and closed curves. The method has been applied to classifying affine-transformed aircraft silhouettes, and appears to perform well.