ABSTRACT
Chapter Overview This chapter introduces a series of shape characterization tools and features based on multiscale transforms. Three types of multiscale transforms, namely the scale-space, Gabor and wavelets, are discussed in an intuitive manner, including comments on how these transforms can be analyzed and used to produce shape features. Next, an approach for estimating the multiscale curvature of a contour based on the Fourier transform is discussed, followed by a similar contour-based description calculated by using the wavelet transform. Several algorithms for shape characterization based on these descriptors are discussed. Finally, the multiscale energies are presented as an interesting approach to obtaining global shape features.
