On the detection of the axes of symmetry of symmetric and almost symmetric planar images

A simple algorithm is presented for finding all the axes of symmetry of symmetric and almost symmetric planar images having nonuniform gray-level (intensity images). The technique, which can also be used in conjunction with planar curves, is based on the identification of the centroids of the given image and other related sets of points, followed by a maximization of a specially defined coefficient of symmetry. Owing to the nature of the required procedures, which are strictly based on the computation of mean values, the method is not particularly affected by the presence of noise and is especially suited for application in conjunction with digitized figures