On analysis of circle moments and texture features for cartridge images recognition

Even though rapid advances in intelligent firearm identification have been made in recently years, the major practical and theoretical problems are still unsolved. From the practical point of view, capturing high quality images from ballistics specimen is a difficult task. From the theoretical point of view, extracting the descriptive features from projectile and cartridge images is an open research question in firearm identification. The aim of this paper is to address the research issues with respect to feature extraction and intelligent ballistics recognition. In this paper, different image processing techniques are employed for digitizing the ballistics images. Due to some segments in an image systematically distributed by the image's geometrical circular center, the existing moment invariants however cannot extract the required pattern features for intelligent recognition. This paper presents the novel feature set called circle moment invariants to overcome the shortcoming of existing moment invariants. In addition, an intelligent system is designed for classifying and evaluating the extracted features of ballistics images. The experimental results indicate that the proposed approach and feature criteria are capable of classifying the cartridge images very efficiently and effectively. Consequently, the circle moment invariants are proved to be the adequate descriptors for describing the pattern features in cartridge images. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.