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Introduction

• A distance transform is a representation of a

distance function to an object, as an image.

• It is also known as distance map or distance

field.
 Basics

• A connected space is a topological space which cannot be

represented as the disjoint union of two or more nonempty
open subsets.

• We often call a connected space an “object”.

 Euclidean distance
• The Euclidean distance or Euclidean metric is
the "ordinary" distance between two points
that one would measure with a ruler, which
can be proven by repeated application of the
Pythagorean theorem.

• In Euclidean n-space, it is defined as:

√(∑(xi -yi )^2
 Geodesic distance
• the distance between two vertices in a graph
is the number of edges in a shortest path
connecting them.
• to determine a geodesic distance in a
connected space of this image:
each point - node of a graph,
each linkage - an arc
Comparison between Euclidean &
Geodesic distances
 Manhattan distance
• It is also known as rectilinear distance, L1 distance or
city block distance.
• D = |x1 – x2 | + |y1 - y2|
• The red, blue, and yellow lines
have the same length (12) using
both Euclidean and Manhattan
distance.
• Using Euclidean geometry, the green
line is the unique shortest path.
 Chessboard Distance
• The chessboard distance is a metric defined on a
vector space where the distance between two
vectors is the greatest of their differences along any
coordinate dimension.

• The chessboard distance is the

number of moves a king requires
to move between spaces.
 Distance map

• A distance transform, also known as distance

map or distance field, is a derived representation of
a digital image.

• The distance map labels each pixel of the image with

the distance to the nearest obstacle pixel.

• A most common type of obstacle pixel is a boundary

pixel in a binary image.
• Usually the transform/map is qualified with
the chosen metric.

• Common metrics are:

 Euclidean distance
 Taxicab geometry, also known as City block
distance or Manhattan distance
 Chessboard distance
Chessboard distance transform on
a binary image
 Manhattan distance transform on a binary
image

Binary input image. Output distance map

Black is background, using Manhattan
white is object. distance.
 Applications
Applications are

• digital image processing (e.g., blurring

effects, skeletonising)
• motion planning in robotics
• path finding
 Skeleton Extraction
Shape -> DT -> Medial Axis

• The medial axis of an object is the set of all points

having more than one closest point on the object's
boundary.
• It is a tool for biological shape recognition.
 Illustrations
The binary image when a distance transform is
applied (scaled by a factor of 5) :
The distance transform is sometimes very
sensitive to small changes in the object.
• This can be of advantage when we want to
distinguish between similar objects like the
two different rectangles above.

• However, it can also cause problems when

trying to classify objects into classes of
roughly the same shape.

• It also makes the distance transform very

sensitive to noise.
Real world image -> Binary Image -> Distance Map

threshold the image

at a value of 100

real world The scaled (factor 6)

image distance transform
 What we learn from the illustration

• Distance transform gives a rough measure for the

width of the object at each point.
• But is quite inaccurate at places where the object is
incorrectly segmented from the background.

• Also the binary input image must be a good

representation of the object that we want to process.
• Simple thresholding is often not enough. It might be
necessary to further process the image before
applying the distance transform.
 References
• Technical Report on Distance Transform by Etienne
Folio
• Distance Transform by David Coeurjolly
• HIPR2 Image Processing Learning Resources
• http://www.desmith.com/MJdS/DT1.htm
• http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~rklette/TeachAucklan
d.html/mm/MI30slides.pdf
• http://www.tele.ucl.ac.be/PEOPLE/OC/these/node10
.html#eq:def_chamfer34
Thank You