Angular bisector network, a simplified generalized Voronoi diagram: application to processing complex intersections in biomedical images

One of the major goals of computer vision is the research and the development of flexible methods for shape description. A large group of shape description techniques is given by heuristic approaches, which yield acceptable results in the description of simple shapes and regions. In this case, objects are represented by a planar graph with nodes symbolizing subregions from region decomposition, and region shape is then described by the graph properties. In the paper, the angular bisector network (ABN), a descriptor of polygonal shape, is used to automatically detect intersections between neurites of cell structures. Some properties of the ABN, such as linear algebraic complexity, easy extraction of characteristic points, etc., are very useful and experimental results are promising.