An adaptive local smoothing for contour figure approximation

We propose a method for contour figure approximation which does not assume the shape of primitives for contours. By smoothing out only local details by curvature flow process, a given contour figure is approximated. The amount of smoothing is determined adaptively based on the sizes of the local details. To detect local details and to determine the amount of the local smoothing, the method uses the technique of the scale space analysis. Experimental results show that this approximation method has preferable properties for contour figure recognition, e.g. only finite number of approximations are obtained from a given contour figure.