Fundamental Geodesic Deformations in Spaces of Treelike Shapes

This paper presents a new geometric framework for analysis of planar treelike shapes for applications such as shape matching, recognition and morphology, using the geometry of the space of treelike shapes. Mathematically, the shape space is given the structure of a stratified set which is a quotient of a normed vector space with a metric inherited from the vector space norm. We give examples of geodesic paths in tree-space corresponding to fundamental deformations of small trees, and discuss how these deformations are key building blocks for understanding deformations between larger trees.