Extraction of edge and skeleton from curvilinear structure object

Firstly, the energy of gradient vector flow field is achieved through the isotropic diffusion. Secondly, according to the energy, the initial curves of edge and skeleton are obtained without any initialization of edge and skeleton. And lastly, these curves are evolved by snake model. The evolution of curves will stop when the energy of the model get to be minimal. The final curves are that of edge and skeleton. In this method, not only can the curves of edge and skeleton be obtained at the same time, but also the cost of calculation is decreased through improving the calculation of curvilinear structure strength map. Using several two-dimensional synthetic and real examples, we show the validity of this method.