Abstract
An efficient algorithm for computing the medial axis transform of an an m by n binary image, that is, an image represented as a matrix of ones and zeros with m rows and n columns, is developed. The medial axis transform is, effectively, the set of all maximal square blocks of ones in the image where a square block is maximal if it is not contained by any other square blocks of ones. The algorithm presented requires O(mn) time and O(n) space and runs in a single pass through the image. This property makes it ideally suited to processing, in real time, images obtained from a linear array scanner since the memory requirements do not grow as the image is scanned and the medial axis is generated as the image is scanned.
The algorithm is not only efficient in theory but practical as well; the algorithm has been implemented in four pages of fully commented C code.
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© 1989 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Breu, H. (1989). An efficient algorithm for finding all maximal square blocks in a matrix. In: Dehne, F., Sack, J.R., Santoro, N. (eds) Algorithms and Data Structures. WADS 1989. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 382. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-51542-9_38
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-51542-9_38
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