A medial-surface oriented 3-d two-subfield thinning algorithm

A new thinning algorithm for extracting medial surfaces on 3-d binary image s is proposed. It works in cubic grids where the 26-adjacency relation is u sed in the set of 1-voxels and the 6-adjacency relation is used in the set of 0-voxels. The new thinning algorithm is a two-subfield algorithm, i.e., a 3-d image is separated into two isometric subfields and the algorithm wor ks on one subfield at a time. For extracting medial-surface skeletons, the algorithm preserves "edge voxels". The thinning algorithm is proved to pres erve connectivity. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.