Two measures for the homology groups of binary volumes

Abstract

Given a binary object (2D or 3D), its Betti numbers characterize the number of holes in each dimension. They are obtained algebraically, and even though they are perfectly defined, there is no unique way to display these holes. We propose two geometric measures for the holes, which are uniquely defined and try to compensate the loss of geometric information during the homology computation: the thickness and the breadth. They are obtained by filtering the information of the persistent homology computation of a filtration defined through the signed distance transform of the binary object.