Detection of a polymorphic Mesoamerican symbol using a rule-based approach

This paper describes a technique to recognize a Mesoamerican symbol whose shape is extremely variable. We extract symbols from a drawing and we encode them as discrete curves. We perform the recognition using a set of rules that define the correct symbol. One of the rules is the presence of a single symmetry axis. We describe a comparison metric between curves in order to search for symmetries. The other rules used for the recognition concern the morphology of the symbol. The proposed technique proves to be fast and efficient. We present recognition results obtained on various pre-hispanic images. The rule-based approach proposed and implemented here, appears suitable to detect polymorphic signs, a common feature of Mesoamerican symbols. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of pattern recognition into the field of Mesoamerican iconography.