A shape descriptor based on symbolic data analysis

This article presents a new method for shape description suitable to be used as a solution to the retrieval problem in large image collections. The proposed approach, called Multiscale Symbolic Data Descriptor (MSDD) combines multiscale methods with Symbolic Data Analysis. The contour convexities and concavities at different scale levels are represented using a two-dimensional matrix from which we extract Symbolic Data in order to have a compact and efficient representation of the image in terms of computational resources.