Geometric Shape Features Extraction Using a Steady State Partial Differential Equation System

A unified method for extracting geometric shape features from binary image data using a steady state partial differential equation (PDE) system as a boundary value problem is presented in this paper. The PDE and functions are formulated to extract the thickness, orientation, and skeleton simultaneously. The main advantages of the proposed method is that the orientation is defined without derivatives and thickness computation is not imposed a topological constraint on the target shape. A one-dimensional analytical solution is provided to validate the proposed method. In addition, two-dimensional numerical examples are presented to confirm the usefulness of the proposed method.