Curvature-Based Segmentation for Sketch Understanding

Abstract

Segmentation is known as an important and fundamental task in sketch understanding, by which free hand drawing is processed into primitive geometric units such as line segments, arcs, etc. Usually, two types of information are used in segmentation: drawing speed and curvature. This paper first analyzes the necessity of drawing speed and curvature, then concludes that curvature is better for segmentation, and drawing speed is harmful to later steps in sketch understanding. To provide a fast and robust method for segmentation, we device a window-controlled relative curvature calculation method which is immune to ink noise. Based on the method, our segmentation approach adopts a two-step strategy which shows satisfying experimental results.