This paper presents an object recognition method that exploits the representation of the images obtained by means of a Binary Partition Tree (BPT). The shape matching technique in which it is based was first presented in [1]. This method compares a transformed version of an object shape model (reference contour) to the contours of a partition of the image. The comparison is based on a distance map that measures the euclidean distance between any point in the image to the partition contours. In [1], this algorithm was applied using a colour-based segmentation of the image and a full-search was performed to find the best match between the searched object and the contours of this segmentation. Here, the information of the Binary Partition Tree is used both to obtain the segmentation and to guide and reduce the search for the optimum match between the shape and the objects of the image.