Content based image retrieval is one of the hottest research topics of current decade. It has also been researched, investigated and implemented in past for solving the image retrieval by contents problem especially when it comes to search for particular images within a collection of millions of images. Daily based expansion of modern information technology infrastructure and the usage of digital images have always highlighted the limitations of existing image retrieval techniques and provided room for improvement and development of new techniques for image retrieval. This opened a path for researchers to develop even superior techniques that can provide more accurate and efficient search results by image contents. This way, shape based image retrieval techniques came into existence and soon became popular among researchers due to its unique properties and behavior. Since the invention of shape based image retrieval techniques, many research articles, algorithms and whole systems have been proposed based on this technique. Some of these techniques, algorithms and complete systems really worked and provided the expected results, some failed to deliver the intended results due to certain limitations and in capabilities. In this research study some of the latest shape based image retrieval techniques are discussed along with their implementation strategies and lacking capabilities which provided a categorized overview based on common properties for better understanding.