A novel approach for partial shape matching and similarity based on data envelopment analysis

Due to the growing number of 3D objects in digital libraries, the task of searching and browsing models in an extensive 3D database has been the focus of considerable research in the area. In the last decade, several approaches to retrieve 3D models based on shape similarity have been proposed. The majority of the existing methods addresses the problem of similarity between objects as a global matching problem. Consequently, most of these techniques do not support a part of the object as a query, in addition to their poor performance for classes with globally non-similar shape models and also for articulated objects. The partial matching technique seems to be a suitable solution to these problems. In this paper, we address the problem of shape matching and retrieval. We propose a new approach based on partial matching in which each 3D object is segmented into its constituent parts, and shape descriptors are computed from these elements to compare similarities. Several experiments investigated that our technique enables fast computing for content-based 3D shape retrieval and significantly improves the results of our method based on Data Envelopment Analysis descriptor for global matching.