Fourier-based object description in defect image retrieval

Image retrieval has nowadays several industrial applications. In these imaging applications, which typically use large image archives, the matter of computational efficiency is essential. Therefore, compact and efficient features are required to describe the visual content of the images. In this paper, we introduce a new Fourier-based object descriptor that combines the shape and color information of the objects occurring in images into a single low-dimensional descriptor. The experiments performed with an industrial surface defect image database show that the proposed descriptor is an accurate and computationally light approach to object description in a real-world retrieval problem.