Hybrid Skeleton Graph Analysis of Disordered Porous Media. Application to Trabecular Bone

In this paper, we present a new method for modeling disordered porous media. Recent work has shown that the line skeleton is a powerful tool for 3D structure characterization. However, as it generates only 1D curves, the geometry of the material is sometimes excessively approximated. Our algorithm is an improved solution as it considers the local shape of each element that composes the structure of the medium. It consists in an efficient combination of curve and surface thinning techniques. Features extracted from the new skeleton contain significant topological and morphological information. A clinical study carried out on trabecular bone samples demonstrates the ability of our method to discriminate between 2 different populations