A Fourier Descriptor of 2D Shapes Based on Multiscale Centroid Contour Distances Used in Object Recognition in Remote Sensing Images

A shape descriptor is an effective tool for describing the shape feature of an object in remote sensing images. Researchers have put forward a lot of excellent descriptors. The discriminability of some descriptors is very strong in the experiments, but usually their computational cost is large, which makes them unsuitable to be used in practical applications. This paper proposes a new descriptor-FMSCCD (Fourier descriptor based on multiscale centroid contour distance)—which is a frequency domain descriptor based on the CCD (centroid contour distance) method, multiscale description, and Fourier transform. The principle of FMSCCD is simple, and the computational cost is very low. What is commendable is that its discriminability is still strong, and its compatibility with other features is also great. Experiments on three databases demonstrate its strong discriminability and operational efficiency.