A fast and flexible thinning algorithm

A fast serial and parallel algorithm for thinning digital patterns is presented. The processing speed is faster than previous algorithms in that it reads pixels along the edge of the input pattern rather than all pixels in each iteration. Using this algorithm, an experiment is conducted and the patterns such as 'X', 'H', 'A', 'moving body', and 'leaf' are tested. The results show that this algorithm is faster, structure-preserving, and more flexible in that it can be done either sequentially or in parallel.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>