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Skeleton growing: an algorithm to extract a curve skeleton from a pseudonormal vector field

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Abstract

A curve skeleton is used to represent a 3D object in many different applications. It is a 1D curve that captures topology of the 3D object. The proposed method extracts a curve skeleton from the vector field inside the 3D object. A vector at each voxel of the 3D object is calculated using a pseudonormal vector. By using such a calculation, the computation time is significantly reduced compared with using a typical potential field. A curve skeleton is then extracted from the pseudonormal vector field by using a skeleton-growing algorithm. The proposed algorithm uses high-curvature boundary voxels to search for a set of critical points and skeleton branches near high-curvature areas. The set of detected critical points is then used to grow a curve skeleton in the next step. All parameters of our algorithms are calculated from the 3D object itself, without user intervention. The effectiveness of our method is demonstrated in our experiments.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Yasuyuki Matsushita (Microsoft Research Asia) for his constructive duscussions and valuable suggestions. The research is sponsored by Microsoft Research Collaborative Research Projects (MSR CORE7).

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  1. The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Natapon Pantuwong & Masanori Sugimoto

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  1. Natapon Pantuwong
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  2. Masanori Sugimoto
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Correspondence to Natapon Pantuwong.

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Pantuwong, N., Sugimoto, M. Skeleton growing: an algorithm to extract a curve skeleton from a pseudonormal vector field. Vis Comput 29, 203–216 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-012-0721-0

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