Discriminative outlines parts for shape retrieval

•We propose a method for shape recognition using only discriminative parts.•These parts are determined for each object by performing psycho visual experiments.•Discriminative outlines are described with geometric attributes.

In this paper we propose a new method for shape retrieval using only discriminative parts which are sufficient for the recognition of many objects and their classes. The discriminative outline shape is firstly determined by performing psycho-visual tests and then described with geometric attributes of high curvature points located along the outline. This obtained description is invariant to scale change, rotation, mirroring and deformation. To study the performance of our approach, global approach which deals with the whole contour and partial approach which is based on the discriminative part are compared. Experiments conducted on our data set and a selection of MPEG-7 dataset demonstrated the usefulness of this approach and the results obtained are presented and discussed.