Retrieving Images by 2D Shape: A Comparison of Computation Methods with Human Perceptual Judgments

In content based image retrieval, systems allow users to ask for objects similar in shape to a query object. However, there is no clear understanding of how computational shape similarity corresponds to human shape similarity. In this paper several shape similarity measures were evaluated on planar, connected, non-occluded binary shapes. Shape similarity using algebraic moments, spline curve distances, cumulative turning angle, sign of curvature and Hausdorff-distance were compared to human similarity judgments on twenty test shapes against a large image database.