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A modified ZS thinning algorithm by a hybrid approach

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Abstract

Thinning is one of the most important techniques in the field of image processing. It is applied to erode the image of an object layer-by-layer until a skeleton is left. Several thinning algorithms allowing to get a skeleton of a binary image are already proposed in the literature. This paper investigates several well-known parallel thinning algorithms and proposes a modified version of the most widely used thinning algorithm, called the ZS algorithm. The proposed modified ZS (MZS) algorithm is implemented and compared against seven existing algorithms. Experimental results and performances evaluation, using different image databases, confirm the proposed MZS algorithm improvement over the seven examined algorithms both in terms of the obtained results quality and the computational speed. Moreover, for an efficient implementation (on Graphics Processing Units), a parallel model of the MZS algorithm is proposed (using the Compute Unified Device Architecture, CUDA, as a parallel programming model). Evaluation results have shown that the parallel version of the proposed algorithm is, on average, more than 21 times faster than the traditional CPU sequential version.

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Acknowledgements

This work was carried out in the framework of research activities of the laboratory LIMED which is affiliated to the Faculty of Exact Sciences of the University of Bejaia and the Image and Information processing department of IMT Atlantique Institute. The authors would like to thank the referees for their comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Informatique Médicale, LIMED, Faculté des Sciences Exactes, Université de Bejaia, 06000, Bejaia, Algeria

    Lynda Ben Boudaoud & Abdelkamel Tari

  2. Image and Information Processing Department, IMT Atlantique Institute, 29238, Brest, France

    Basel Solaiman

Authors
  1. Lynda Ben Boudaoud
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  2. Basel Solaiman
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  3. Abdelkamel Tari
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Correspondence to Lynda Ben Boudaoud.

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Ben Boudaoud, L., Solaiman, B. & Tari, A. A modified ZS thinning algorithm by a hybrid approach. Vis Comput 34, 689–706 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-017-1407-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-017-1407-4

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