On planar curve representation

A new scheme, based on the concept of stressed curves, is developed for extracting significant curvature points on a planar curve. The authors show that the problem has an interesting analogy to stable configurations of a mechanical structure. The stressed curve is generated by recursively solving a potential energy minimization problem. The resulting algorithm is rather simple and is local since the iteration for each point of the curve uses at most four of its nearest neighbors. Examples and some of the applications of this new scheme are provided along with a comparison with the curvature primal sketch scheme. The proposed scheme offers efficient and accurate extraction of significant curvature points with a smaller computational complexity.