Method and system for thinning images

摘要

Image data is subjected to a thinning process so as to derive a medial axis for each image. Boolean image data is reduced to lines and/or dots, each line generally being a centroid line of an image. The thinning process uses a change look-up table which is addressed using values from pixels in the neighborhood of a particular pixel which is the target for possible change. Pixels in the neighborhood which are to be evaluated are given a weight by use of a weight look-up table and the weight of the pixel is multiplied by the value of the pixel. Alternately, the weight of the pixel may be added to the pixel value. The pixels in the neighborhood of a target pixel (i.e., pixel which is being evaluated for possible removal) have their weights and values taken into account by a summation of the results of the multiplication (or addition) performed for each pixel so as to provide an address used to address a change look-up table which supplies an output indicative of change in the target pixel. The thinning is accomplished by a floating point processor using a pipelined procedure.