A NEW SHAPE-PRESERVING PARALLEL THINNING ALGORITHM FOR 3D DIGITAL IMAGES

This paper is concerned with a new parallel thinning algorithm for thr ee-dimensional digital images that preserves the topology and maintain s their shape. We introduce an approach of selecting shape points and outer-layer used for erosion during each iteration. The approach produ ces good skeleton for different types of corners. The concept of using two image versions in thinning is introduced and its necessity in par allel thinning is justified. The robustness of the algorithm under pse udo-random noise as well as rotation with respect to shape properties is studied and the results are found to be satisfactory. (C) 1997 Patt ern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.