On the computation of the affine skeletons of planar curves and the detection of skew symmetry

In this paper we discuss a new approach to compute discrete skeletons of pl anar shapes which is based on affine distances, being therefore affine inva riant. The method works with generic curves that may contain concave sectio ns. A dynamical interpretation of the affine skeleton construction, based o n curve evolution, is discussed as well. We propose an efficient implementa tion of the method and give examples. We also demonstrate how to use this m ethod to detect affine skew symmetry in real images. (C) 2001 Pattern Recog nition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.