Skeletons from chain-coded contours

摘要

The speed of skeletonizing algorithms is improved by applying themon contour pixels only. Further improvement can be gained by usingchain-coded contours. If the deletion of a contour pixel is allowed,according to a simple connectivity test, the corresponding pair of chaincodes is replaced by a predefined test of other chain codes. Theresulting skeleton does not require cleaning or pruning, but the numberof branches can be easily controlled by modifying the replacement table.Since the algorithm is sequential, the starting pixel on the contourrequires special attention to avoid spurious branches