Connectedness, Homotopy and Homology

Aspects of Computational Topology with Applications

Weiwei Pan Spring 2008

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Motivating Questions
Consider the following challenges: 1. How do we automate the process of enumerating the number of distinct objects in a digital image (count the number of people in a photograph, say)? 2. How can we convert scanned handwritten documents into PDFs? 3. How can we approximate the layout of a position-unaware ad-hoc sensor network? 4. How do we determine if its possible for a robot to to travel a certain collision-free path on an obstacle ladened terrain? It turns out that many of these questions can be answered by computing topological features and properties of the input domain.

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Topology Notions
Unlike geometry, topology studies the abby (that is, distance distorting) features and properties of spaces: Geometry Convex Hull Lines Polygons Topology Path Connected component Homotopy class of paths Homotopy types

These more generalized properties of spaces still hold a lot of information!

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Connectivity and Network Sketching

The Problem: Compute virtual coordinates of wireless sensor without positioning devices. The Topology: The connectivity of the network contains enough information to capture salient topological features and to approximate the geometry of the layout. The Algorithm: (input is the communication graph of the nodes) 1. Form the Landmark Voronoi Complex (LVC). 2. Form the Combinatorial Delaunay Graph (CDG). 3. Find a planar subgraph of CDG (CDM). 4. Iteratively nd and embed longer cycles on the boundaries of a Euclidean region to determine the outer face of the CDM. Let the embedding of the outer face determine virtual coordinates for interior points.

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Example
Example. The pictures below describes a choice of a landmark set from a distribution of sensor nodes, the LVC generated by the set, the dual Delaunay graph, and the embedding of the CDM.

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Homology and Image Analysis

The Problem: Count the number of objects in images with parameters without segmentation. The Topology: Calculating the homology groups of the image based on a binary (parametrized) ltration is an effective method in image searching. The Algorithm: (input is a grayscale 2D image) 1. Generate a binary parametrized ltration using thresh-holding, {in+1 : Kn Kn+1 |0 n 225}. 2. Calculate H1 and H0 of each binary image Kn , 0 n 225. 3. Calculate H1 and H0 of the grayscale image by summing the kernels of the induced homology maps {i }. n

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Example
Example. The pictures below shows the result of a automated analysis of a MRI image by Pixcavator. The program detects one dark mass and one light mass.

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Related Papers
References
[1] S. Cabello, Y. Liu, A. Mantler and J. Snoeyink, Testing homotopy for paths in the plane, Proceedings of the eighteenth annual symposium on Computational geometry, pages 160-169, 2002. [2] S. Funke and N. Milosavlijevc, Network sketching or: how much geometry hides in connectivity? Part II, Proceedings of the eighteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms, pages 958-967, 2007. [3] S. Funke and C. Klein, Hole detection or: how much geometry hides in connectivity?, SCG 06: Proceedings of the 22nd annual symposium on Computational geometry, pages 377-385, 2006. [4] L. Jaillet and T. Simon, Path deformation roadmaps, The International Journal of Robotics Research, in press, 2008. [5] P. Saveliev, Topological analysis of parametric images, E-print http://users.marshall.edu/ saveliev/Research/TAPI/TAPI.pdf.

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