Feature-Preserving Medial Axis Noise Removal

This paper presents a novel technique for medial axis noise removal. The method introduced removes the branches generated by noise on an object's boundary without losing the fine features that are often altered or destroyed by current pruning methods. The algorithm consists of an intuitive threshold-based pruning process, followed by an automatic feature reconstruction phase that effectively recovers lost details without reintroducing noise. The result is a technique that is robus and easy to use. Tests show that the method works well on a variety of objects with significant difference in shape complexity, topology and noise characteristics.

[1]  Stephen M. Pizer,et al.  Hierarchical Shape Description Via the Multiresolution Symmetric Axis Transform , 1987, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.

[2]  Michael Leyton,et al.  Shape and causal-history , 1992 .

[3]  HARRY BLUM,et al.  Shape description using weighted symmetric axis features , 1978, Pattern Recognit..

[4]  V. Ralph Algazi,et al.  Continuous skeleton computation by Voronoi diagram , 1991, CVGIP Image Underst..

[5]  Alain Fournier,et al.  Matching and Interpolation of Shapes using Unions of Circles , 1996, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[6]  Alfred M. Bruckstein,et al.  Pruning Medial Axes , 1998, Comput. Vis. Image Underst..

[7]  Dominique Attali,et al.  Modeling noise for a better simplification of skeletons , 1996, Proceedings of 3rd IEEE International Conference on Image Processing.

[8]  Markus Ilg,et al.  Voronoi skeletons: theory and applications , 1992, Proceedings 1992 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

[9]  Michael D. McCool Accelerated Evaluation of Box Splines via a Parallel Inverse FFT , 1996, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[10]  Robert L. Ogniewicz,et al.  Skeleton-space: a multiscale shape description combining region and boundary information , 1994, 1994 Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

[11]  Gabriella Sanniti di Baja,et al.  Pruning Discrete and Semiocontinuous Skeletons , 1995, ICIAP.

[12]  Farzin Mokhtarian,et al.  A Theory of Multiscale, Curvature-Based Shape Representation for Planar Curves , 1992, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..