Method and apparatus for extracting the skeleton of a binary figure by contour-based erosion

摘要

A method and apparatus for performing thinning, or skeletonization, of binary images or figures are provided. More particularly, a method is implemented in a system for encoding a figure using a mid-crack boundary representation to identify the boundary contour of the figure. Then, the boundary contour of the figure is traversed while the boundary is selectively displaced inward. The boundary contour is also concurrently re-encoded based on the selectively displaced boundary.