Geometric Computing Notes

Mark Jajeh
September 14, 2015

Lecture 2: Shape Analysis

1.1

Shape Analysis

How, as a computer do you define shapes?

There are many questions about shape you can ask...
Medial Axes(MA) Simple and elegant mathematical definition: Given any shape, the medial axes is made up of all
the points that have 2 or more nearest neighbors on the boundary. So there is an equal distance between 2 points on
the boundary to the interior point, and these 2 points are the closest boundary points ( could be more than 2)... The
MA is not a closed set it is open.
Properties
Thin
In N dimensions, the MA is at most N-1 dimensions
Preserve objects shape
build a circle for every point on medial axes with radius as distance to boundary. Take union of all circles to
get shape back
Preserve objects topology
Does not break connectivity ( topology).
Not stable under boundary pertubation.
MA gets complicated from addition of bumps.
Grassfire analogy