1-Attempt parallel thinning

Abstract

Thinning is a frequently used technique capable of producing all kinds of skeleton-like shape features in a topology-preserving way. It is an iterative object reduction: some border points of binary objects that satisfy some topological and geometrical constraints are deleted, and the entire process is repeated until stability is reached. In the conventional implementation of thinning algorithms, the deletability of all border points in the actual picture is to be investigated. That is why, we introduced the concept of k-attempt thinning ( $$k\ge 1$$ ) in our previous work (presented in the 20th International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis, IWCIA 2020). In the case of a k-attempt algorithm, if a border point ‘survives’ at least k successive iterations, it is ‘immortal’ (i.e., it cannot be deleted later). In this paper, we give a computationally efficient implementation scheme for 1-attempt thinning, and a 1-attempt 2D parallel thinning algorithm is reported. The advantage of the new implementation scheme over the conventional one is also illustrated.