Curve length estimation based on cubic spline interpolation in gray-scale images

This paper deals with a novel local arc length estimator for curves in gray-scale images. The method first estimates a cubic spline curve fit for the boundary points using the gray-level information of the nearby pixels, and then computes the sum of the spline segments’ lengths. In this model, the second derivatives and y coordinates at the knots are required in the computation; the spline polynomial coefficients need not be computed explicitly. We provide the algorithm pseudo code for estimation and preprocessing, both taking linear time. Implementation shows that the proposed model gains a smaller relative error than other state-of-the-art methods. © 2013, Journal of Zhejiang University Science Editorial Office and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.