Evaluation of Skeletonization Techniques for 2D Binary Images

Abstract

In the realm of modern image processing, the emphasis often lies on engineering-based approaches rather than scientific solutions to address diverse practical problems. One prevalent task within this domain involves the skeletonization of binary images. Skeletonization is a powerful process for extracting the skeleton of objects located in digital binary images. This process is widely employed for automating many tasks in numerous fields such as pattern recognition, robot vision, animation, and image analysis. The existing skeletonization techniques are mainly based on three approaches: boundary erosion, distance coding, and Voronoi diagram for identifying an approximate skeleton. In this work, we present an empirical evaluation of a set of well-known techniques and report our findings. We specifically deal with computing skeletons in 2d binary images by selecting different approaches and evaluating their effectiveness. Visual evaluation is the primary method used to showcase the performance of selected skeletonization algorithms. Due to the absence of a definitive definition for the "true" skeleton of a digital object, accurately assessing the effectiveness of skeletonization algorithms poses a significant research challenge. Although researchers have attempted quantitative assessments, these measures are typically customized for specific domains and may not be suitable for our current work. The experimental results shown in this work illustrate the performance of the three main approaches in applying skeletonization with respect to different perspectives.