Abstract
Minkowski tensors contain information about shape and orientation of the underlying convex body. We make this precise by showing that reconstructing a centered ellipse in two-dimensional Euclidean space from its rank-2 surface tensor is a well-posed inverse problem. It turns out that this result can be restated equivalently with other geometric tomography data derived from the support function of the ellipse, such as the first three non-trivial Fourier coefficients. We present explicit reconstruction algorithms for all three types of input. The relevance of these findings is illustrated in an application to stationary particle processes. We define and discuss two shape ellipses, each containing information about the mean shape and orientation of the typical particle.


Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alesker, S.: Description of continuous isometry covariant valuations on convex sets. Geom. Dedicata 74(3), 241–248 (1999)
Andrews, G.E., Askey, R., Roy, R.: Special Functions. Encyclopedia of Mathematics and Its Applications, vol. 71. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1999)
Beisbart, C., Dahlke, R., Mecke, K., Wagner, H.: Vector- and tensor-valued descriptors for spatial patterns. In: Morphology of Condensed Matter (Wuppertal 2001). Lecture Notes in Physics, vol. 600, pp. 238–260. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Cvijović, D.: The Fourier series expansions of the Legendre incomplete elliptic integrals of the first and second kind. Integral Transforms Spec. Funct. 21(3), 235–242 (2010)
Erikson, R., Kiderlen, M.: Mean surface and volume particle tensors under \(L\)-restricted isotropy and associated ellipsoids. Adv. Geom. (2023, to appear)
Gardner, R.J.: Geometric Tomography. Encyclopedia of Mathematics and Its Applications, vol. 58. Cambridge University Press, New York (2006)
Glasauer, S.: A generalization of intersection formulae of integral geometry. Geom. Dedicata 68(1), 101–121 (1997)
Goodey, P., Weil, W.: Centrally symmetric convex bodies and the spherical Radon transform. J. Differ. Geom. 35(3), 675–688 (1992)
Gradshteyn, I.S., Ryzhik, I.M.: Table of Integrals, Series, and Products. Elsevier/Academic Press, Amsterdam (2007)
Groemer, H.: Geometric Applications of Fourier Series and Spherical Harmonics. Encyclopedia of Mathematics and Its Applications, vol. 61. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1996)
Hadwiger, H.: Vorlesungen über Inhalt, Oberfläche und Isoperimetrie. Springer, Berlin (1957)
Kousholt, A.: Reconstruction of \(n\)-dimensional convex bodies from surface tensors. Adv. Appl. Math. 83, 115–144 (2017)
Kousholt, A., Kiderlen, M.: Reconstruction of convex bodies from surface tensors. Adv. Appl. Math. 76, 1–33 (2016)
Kousholt, A., Schulte, J.: Reconstruction of convex bodies from moments. Discrete Comput. Geom. 65(1), 1–42 (2021)
Mardia, K.V., Jupp, P.E.: Directional Statistics. Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics. Wiley, Chichester (2000)
McKilliam, R.G., Quinn, B.G., Clarkson, I.V.L.: Direction estimation by minimum squared arc length. IEEE Trans. Signal Process. 60(5), 2115–2124 (2012)
Miles, R.E.: The sampling, by quadrats, of planar aggregates. J. Microscopy 113(3), 257–267 (1978)
Molchanov, I.: Theory of Random Sets. Probability and Its Applications (New York). Springer, London (2005)
Schneider, R.: Convex Bodies: The Brunn–Minkowski Theory. Encyclopedia of Mathematics and Its Applications, vol. 151, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2014)
Schneider, R., Schuster, R.: Particle orientation from section stereology. Rend. Circ. Mat. Palermo Suppl. 77, 623–633 (2006)
Schneider, R., Weil, W.: Stochastic and Integral Geometry. Probability and Its Applications (New York). Springer, Berlin (2008)
Schröder-Turk, G.E., Kapfer, S., Breidenbach, B., Beisbart, C., Mecke, K.: Tensorial Minkowski functionals and anisotropy measures for planar patterns. J. Microscopy 238(1), 57–74 (2010)
Schröder-Turk, G.E., Mickel, W., Kapfer, S.C., Klatt, M.A., Schaller, F.M., Hoffmann, M.J.F., Kleppmann, N., Armstrong, P., Inayat, A., Hug, D., Reichelsdorfer, M., Peukert, W., Schwieger, W., Mecke, K.: Minkowski tensor shape analysis of cellular, granular and porous structures. Adv. Mater. 23(22–23), 2535–2553 (2011)
Sun, D., Sun, J.: Strong semismoothness of eigenvalues of symmetric matrices and its application to inverse eigenvalue problems. SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 40(6), 2352–2367 (2002)
Vedel Jensen, E.B., Ziegel, J.F.: Local stereology of tensors of convex bodies. Methodol. Comput. Appl. Probab. 16(2), 263–282 (2014)
Waldmann, S.: Topology. An Introduction. Springer, Cham (2014)
Weil, W.: On the mean shape of particle processes. Adv. Appl. Probab. 29(4), 890–908 (1997)
Ziegel, J.F., Nyengaard, J.R., Vedel Jensen, E.B.: Estimating particle shape and orientation using volume tensors. Scand. J. Stat. 42(3), 813–831 (2015)
Acknowledgements
This research was partially supported by Centre for Stochastic Geometry and Advanced Bioimaging, funded by the Villum Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Editor in Charge: Csaba D. Tóth
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Eriksen, R., Kiderlen, M. Reconstructing Planar Ellipses from Translation-Invariant Minkowski Tensors of Rank Two. Discrete Comput Geom 69, 1095–1120 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00454-022-00470-0
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00454-022-00470-0