The description of the object shape is an important characteristic of the image. In image processing and pattern recognition, several different shape descriptors are used. In human visual perception, the shapes are processed in multiple resolutions. Therefore multiscale shape representation is essential in the shape based image classification and retrieval. In the description of the object shape, the multiresolution representation provides also additional accuracy to the shape classification. In this paper we introduce a new descriptor for shape classification. This descriptor is called multiscale Fourier descriptor, and it combines the benefits of Fourier descriptor and multiscale shape representation. This descriptor is formed by applying Fourier transform to the coefficients of wavelet transform of the object boundary. In this way the Fourier descriptor can be presented in multiple resolutions. We make classification experiments using three image databases. The classification resul...