In this paper, we introduce a novel algorithm to solve
global shape registration problems. We use gray-scale “images”
to represent source shapes, and propose a novel twocomponent
Gaussian Mixtures (GM) distance map representation
for target shapes. Based on this flexible asymmetric
image-based representation, a new energy function
is defined. It proves to be a more robust shape dissimilarity
metric that can be computed efficiently. Such high efficiency
is essential for global optimization methods. We adopt one
of them, the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), to effectively
estimate the global optimum of the new energy function.
Experiments and comparison performed on generalized
shape data including continuous shapes, unstructured
sparse point sets, and gradient maps, demonstrate the robustness
and effectiveness of the algorithm.