Craquelure analysis for content-based retrieval

In this paper, we describe a method for the extraction of distinguishable features from crack patterns, particularly those in paintings. First, we filter the selected crack image using 8 differently oriented Gabor filters. Then we thin the image to 1 pixel wide using a morphological thinning algorithm. Next we implement a crack following algorithm and generate statistical structure of global and local features from a chain code based representation. We describe an orientation-based feature extraction method to represent a crack network from sets of local orientation features. The resultant features are used as a guide towards classifying crack network patterns into several predefined classes, i.e circular, rectangular, spider-web, unidirectional and random. A simple classification experiment is presented to describe the significance of those extracted features towards classifying craquelure patterns.