Open curve segmentation via a two-phase scheme

Abstract A two-phase scheme is proposed for the segmentation of open curves. In the first phase, the curvature of each point of the curve is calculated based on the coordinates of five skipped points and the assumption that these five points form a B-spline curve. The points with significant curvatures are collected as candidate corners. During the second phase, the candidate corners are verified for deviations in the global trend of the curve. Those with small deviations are considered excessive and are removed. Application of the proposed method in the segmentation of a typical PCB (printed circuit board) curve, an aerial image of Medioni and Yasumoto (Comput. Vision Graphics Image Process.39, 267–278 (1987)), and a multi-scale four-semicircle curve of Teh and Chin (IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis Mach. Intell.PAMI-11, 859–872 (1989)) show that it is both minimal and accurate.