Computing 3D medial axis for Chamfer distances

Abstract

Medial Axis, also known as Centres of Maximal Disks, is a representation of a shape, which is useful for image description and analysis. Chamfer or Weighted Distances, are discrete distances which allow to approximate the Euclidean Distance with integers. Computing medial axis with chamfer distances has been discussed in the literature for some simple cases, mainly in 2D. In this paper we give a method to compute the medial axis for any chamfer distance in 2D and 3D, by local tests using a lookup table. Our algorithm computes very efficiently the lookup tables and, very important, the neighbourhood to be tested. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg Berlin Heidelberg 2000.