title: Geometry of circular vectors and pattern recognition of shape of a boundary.
abstract: This paper deals with pattern recognition of the shape of the boundary of closed figures on the basis of a circular sequence of measurements taken on the boundary at equal intervals of a suitably chosen argument with an arbitrary starting point. A distance measure between two boundaries is defined in such a way that it has zero value when the associated sequences of measurements coincide by shifting the starting point of one of the sequences. Such a distance measure, which is invariant to the starting point of the sequence of measurements, is used in identification or discrimination by the shape of the boundary of a closed figure. The mean shape of a given set of closed figures is defined, and tests of significance of differences in mean shape between populations are proposed.
authors.affiliation: Statistics Department, 326 Joab Thomas Building, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. crr1@psu.edu
authors.forename: C R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Rao
mesh_terms: D008433:Mathematics; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated