Adaptive vectorization of line drawing images

A novel method for vectorizing line drawing images is presented. The method is based on a sequence of a standard vectorization algorithm and maximum threshold morphology, which can be iterated until a fitting criterion is met. First, ''anchor points'' are found in a coarse vectorization. The position of each anchor point is corrected by morphological operations, after which it is fixed. Next, the vectorization is refined between the anchor points. The method is adaptive because the original input image is used for correcting and improving the vectorization. Postprocessing modules can be added to anticipate specific properties of the line drawings to be vectorized. The vectorization method is evaluated using line drawings differing in scale and resolution. (C) 1997 Academic Press.