Shape Representation via Harmonic Embedding

Alessandro Duci, Anthony J. Yezzi, Sanjoy K. Mitter, Stefano Soatto

Abstract: We present a novel representation of shape for closed planar contours explicitly designed to possess a linear structure. This greatly simplifies linear operations such as averaging, principal component analysis or differentiation in the space of shapes. The representation relies upon embedding the contour on a subset of the space of harmonic functions of which the original contour is the zero level set.