Skeletonization algorithms typically decompose an object’s
silhouette into a set of symmetric parts, offering a
powerful representation for shape categorization. However,
having access to an object’s silhouette assumes correct
figure-ground segmentation, leading to a disconnect with
the mainstream categorization community, which attempts
to recognize objects from cluttered images. In this paper,
we present a novel approach to recovering and grouping
the symmetric parts of an object from a cluttered scene. We
begin by using a multiresolution superpixel segmentation to
generate medial point hypotheses, and use a learned affinity
function to perceptually group nearby medial points likely
to belong to the same medial branch. In the next stage,
we learn higher granularity affinity functions to group the
resulting medial branches likely to belong to the same object.
The resulting framework yields a skeletal approximation
that’s free of many of the instabilities plaguing...