Abstract:Shape is one of the main features in content based image retrieval (CBIR). This paper proposes a new shape signature. In this technique, features of each shape are extracted based on four sides of the rectangle that covers the shape. The proposed technique is Fourier based and it is invariant to translation, scaling and rotation. The retrieval performance between some commonly used Fourier based signatures and the proposed four sides distance (FSD) signature has been tested using MPEG-7 database. Experimental results are shown that the FSD signature has better performance compared with those signatures.