Chapter 7

These slides should not be used as the primary source of data. Students are encouraged to learn from the core textbooks and reference books. Contents in these slides are copyrighted to the instructor and authors of
original texts where applicable. -Mohan Bhandari

Representation, Description and Recognition

 Chapter 7
These slides should not be used as the primary source of data. Students are encouraged to learn from the core textbooks and reference books. Contents in these slides are copyrighted to the instructor and authors of
original texts where applicable. -Mohan Bhandari

REFERENCES

Slides by Brian Mac Namee

[email protected]
 Overview
These slides should not be used as the primary source of data. Students are encouraged to learn from the core textbooks and reference books. Contents in these slides are copyrighted to the instructor and authors of
original texts where applicable. -Mohan Bhandari

Representing region in 2 ways

In terms of its external characteristics (its boundary) →
focus on shape characteristics
In terms of its internal characteristics (its region) → focus
on regional properties, eg: color, texture
 Sometimes, we may need to use both ways
 Overview
These slides should not be used as the primary source of data. Students are encouraged to learn from the core textbooks and reference books. Contents in these slides are copyrighted to the instructor and authors of
original texts where applicable. -Mohan Bhandari


Description describes the region based on the chosen
representation

ex.

Representation→ boundary

Description → length of the boundary, orientation of the
straight line joining its extreme points, and the number of
concavities in the boundary.
 Sensitivity
These slides should not be used as the primary source of data. Students are encouraged to learn from the core textbooks and reference books. Contents in these slides are copyrighted to the instructor and authors of
original texts where applicable. -Mohan Bhandari

Features selected as descriptors should be as

insensitive as possible to variations in
• Size
• Translation
• Rotation
 Representation
These slides should not be used as the primary source of data. Students are encouraged to learn from the core textbooks and reference books. Contents in these slides are copyrighted to the instructor and authors of
original texts where applicable. -Mohan Bhandari


Segmentation techniques yield raw data in the form of pixels
along a boundary or pixels contained in a region. These data
sometimes are used directly to obtain descriptors

Standard uses techniques to compute more useful data
(descriptors) from the raw data in order to decrease the size
of data.
 Representation Types
These slides should not be used as the primary source of data. Students are encouraged to learn from the core textbooks and reference books. Contents in these slides are copyrighted to the instructor and authors of
original texts where applicable. -Mohan Bhandari


Chain Codes

Signatures
 Chain Codes
These slides should not be used as the primary source of data. Students are encouraged to learn from the core textbooks and reference books. Contents in these slides are copyrighted to the instructor and authors of
original texts where applicable. -Mohan Bhandari


Chain codes are used to
represent the image by a
connected sequence of
straight – line segments.
This represented is
based on 4-connectivity
and 8-connectivity of the
segments.
 Chain Codes
These slides should not be used as the primary source of data. Students are encouraged to learn from the core textbooks and reference books. Contents in these slides are copyrighted to the instructor and authors of
original texts where applicable. -Mohan Bhandari

The 4-chain code is

given edge is
003033222111
 Representation
Chain Codes
Chain Codes

• Chain codes can be based on either 4-connectedness or 8-connectedness.

• The first difference of the chain code:
– This difference is obtained by counting the number of direction changes (in a
counterclockwise direction)
– For example, the first difference of the 4-direction chain code 10103322 is
3133030.
• Assuming the first difference code represent a closed path, rotation
normalization can be achieved by circularly shifting the number of the
code so that the list of numbers forms the smallest possible integer.
• Size normalization can be achieved by adjusting the size of the re-
sampling grid.
 Chain Codes
These slides should not be used as the primary source of data. Students are encouraged to learn from the core textbooks and reference books. Contents in these slides are copyrighted to the instructor and authors of
original texts where applicable. -Mohan Bhandari
 Polygonal Approximations

• Polygonal approximations: to represent a boundary by straight line segments, and a

closed path becomes a polygon.
• The number of straight line segments used determines the accuracy of the
approximation.
• Only the minimum required number of sides necessary to preserve the needed shape
information should be used (Minimum perimeter polygons).
• A larger number of sides will only add noise to the model.
 Polygonal Approximations

• Minimum perimeter polygons: (Merging and splitting)

– Merging and splitting are often used together to ensure that vertices appear where they
would naturally in the boundary.
– A least squares criterion to a straight line is used to stop the processing.
 Signature
• The idea behind a signature is to convert a two dimensional boundary into a representative
one dimensional function.
 Signature

• Signatures are invariant to location, but will depend on rotation

and scaling.
• Starting at the point farthest from the reference point or using
the major axis of the region can be used to decrease
dependence on rotation.
 Boundary Representation

• Boundary segments: decompose a boundary into segments.

• Use of the convex hull of the region enclosed by the boundary is a powerful tool for
robust decomposition of the boundary.
 Skeletons

• Skeletons: produce a one pixel wide graph that has the same basic shape of the region,
like a stick figure of a human. It can be used to analyze the geometric structure of a
region which has bumps and “arms”.
 Skeletons

• One application of
skeletonisation is for
character recognition.
• A letter or character is
determined by the
center-line of its strokes,
and is unrelated to the
width of the stroke lines.
 Boundary Descriptors

• There are several simple geometric measures that can be

useful for describing a boundary.
– The length of a boundary: the number of pixels along a
boundary gives a rough approximation of its length.
– Curvature: the rate of change of slope
• To measure a curvature accurately at a point in a digital boundary is difficult
• The difference between the slops of adjacent boundary segments is used as a
descriptor of curvature at the point of intersection of segments
 Shape Number

First difference

• The shape number of a boundary is defined as the first difference of smallest

magnitude.
• The order n of a shape number is defined as the number of digits in its representation.
Shape Number
Shape Number
 Fourier Descriptors

• This is a way of using the Fourier transform to analyze the shape of a

boundary.
– The x-y coordinates of the boundary are treated as the real and imaginary parts of
a complex number.
– Then the list of coordinates is Fourier transformed using the DFT.
– The Fourier coefficients are called the Fourier descriptors.
– The basic shape of the region is determined by the first several coefficients,
which represent lower frequencies.
– Higher frequency terms provide information on the fine detail of the boundary.
Fourier Descriptors
 Remaining AI part

Group Division for Presentation