Object Recognition Using Fourier Descriptors and Genetic Algorithm

This work presents study and experimentation for object recognition when isolated objects are under discussion. The circumstances of similarity transformations, presence of noise, and occlusion have been included as the part of the study. For simplicity, instead of objects, outlines of the objects have been used for the whole process of the recognition. Fourier descriptors have been used as features of the objects. From the analysis and results using Fourier descriptors, the following questions arise: What is the optimum number of descriptors to be used? Are these descriptors of equal importance? To answer these questions, the problem of selecting the best descriptors has been formulated as an optimization problem. Genetic algorithm technique has been mapped and used successfully to have an object recognition system using minimal number of Fourier descriptors. The proposed method assigns, for each of these descriptors, a weighting factor that reflects the relative importance of that descriptor.