Skeleton pruning by contour partitioning

Abstract

In this paper, we establish a unique correspondence between skeleton branches and subarcs of object contours. Based on this correspondence, a skeleton is pruned by removing skeleton branches whose generating points are on the same contour subarc. This has an effect of removing redundant skeleton branches and retaining all the necessary visual branches. We show that this approach preserves skeleton topology, does not shift the skeleton, and it does not shrink the remaining branches. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.