Robust extraction of 1D skeletons from grayscale 3D images

We propose novel thinning conditions for grayscale 3D images that do not rely on image thresholding or segmentation. The resulting grayscale skeletonization routine extracts a topologically-consistent skeleton of curve-like features at all scales and intensities of the image. Our thinning conditions yield rich structural information that be used to identify and delete low-contrast shape features created by blurring and noise.