Abstract
This article presents a new thinning algorithm particularly well suited to handwriting characters or engineering drawing images. The line following scheme is used with major improvements to reduce the distortion at intersections. The new algorithm uses a thinning window to detect the shape and type of each intersection it is about to thin. This added information allows for a much more accurate thinning process. The algorithm also segments the skeleton into line segments as it is generated. These lines correlate partly with the strokes that produced the image. To analyze the performance of the new algorithm, a comparative study of the skeletons is performed over speed and quality criteria. This study shows that the algorithm reduces the distortion at the line intersections while remaining fast.
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Chouinard, C., Plamondon, R. Thinning and segmenting handwritten characters by line following. Machine Vis. Apps. 5, 185–197 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02626997
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02626997