Binary-image comparison with local-dissimilarity quantification

In this paper, we present a method for binary image comparison. For binary images, intensity information is poor and shape extraction is often difficult. Therefore binary images have to be compared without using feature extraction. Due to the fact that different scene patterns can be present in the images, we propose a modified Hausdorff distance (HD) locally measured in an adaptive way. The resulting set of measures is richer than a single global measure. The local HD measures result in a local-dissimilarity map (LDMap) including the dissimilarity spatial layout. A classification of the images in function of their similarity is carried out on the LDMaps using a support vector machine. The proposed method is tested on a medieval illustration database and compared with other methods to show its efficiency. 2007 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.