Segmentation-free skeletonization of gray-scale images via PDE's

A simple approach to compute the skeletons of gray-scale images using partial differential equations is presented in this paper. The proposed scheme works directly on the gray-scale images, without the necessity of pre-segmentation (binarization), or the addition of shock capturing schemes. This is accomplished by deforming the given image according to a family of modified continuous-scale erosion/dilation equations. With the scheme here proposed, the skeleton of multiple objects can be simultaneously computed. Examples on synthetic and real images are provided.

Duke Scholars

Author Guillermo Sapiro Electrical and Computer Engineering