A Comparison of Some Contour Based Shape Descriptors After Applying Bezier Curve Approximation with Application to Brachiopods Classification

The goal of shape descriptors is to uniquely depict the object shape in a large database. In this paper, we present a comparative study between some of contour based shape descriptors after applying a Bezier curve approximation to the contours. Especially, we studied Curvature, Fourier descriptors, Wavelet descriptors, Radial function and Fourier of Radial function. By applying Bezier curve approximation we can reduce the number of points in the contours and gives a smooth curve. We used this technique for fossils classification, Specifically Brachiopods. The five shape descriptors are compared using the City block distance and the recognition rate.