Boundary-Constrained Morphological Skeleton Minimization and Skeleton Reconstruction

A new algorithm for minimizing a morphological skeleton entitled boundary-constrained skeleton minimization (BCSM), as well as a new algorithm for reconstructing an original image from its minimized skeletal structure termed boundary-constrained skeleton reconstruction (BCSR), are proposed. The new algorithms are shown to reduce data storage requirements from (N+1) binary images represented as separate skeleton subsets with their corresponding indices, to 2 binary images composed of a binary morphological skeleton and its corresponding morphological boundary structure. In addition to a reduction in memory storage, BCSM and BCSR result in substantial savings in computational complexity. The proposed algorithms are evaluated in the context of image analysis and coding, and their performance is compared to previous algorithms proposed by Serra and Maragos-Schafer. Sample evaluations indicate a greater than 22-fold savings in computational requirements and 11-fold reduction in memory requirements.