FUZZY MEDIAL AXIS TRANSFORMATION (FMAT) - IMAGE REPRESENTATION, SKELETON EXTRACTION AND UNCERTAINTY MANAGEMENT IN COMPUTER VISION

The problem of extraction of medial axis transformation of a gray imag e with reference to skeletonization, image representation and uncertai nty management in a vision system has been addressed. The Fuzzy Medial Axis Transformation (FMAT) of a fuzzy set f is a set of fuzzy disks w hose sup is f. Unfortunately, specifying the FMAT sometimes requires m ore storage space than specifying f itself. The present paper describe s some techniques to improve the compact representation of FMAT; there by making it practically useful to an image for its skeleton extractio n and compact representation, for shape analysis and template matching , for representation and retrieval, for uncertainty management in reco gnition and for creating new images of various poses. The algorithms i nvolve reduction of redundancy in FMAT, its approximation, and reducti on of the searching spaces for its computation. Computational aspects for the convenience of writing an efficient program have been describe d. Some applications of the FMAT have also been mentioned.