Detection and Characterization of Fibrous Structures : Application to Skin Aging

The detection and characterization of thin structures by the means of image processing is a challenging task. Due to their thinnes such structures are difficult to visualize, and are ofthen altered by noise or insufficient sampling. However, thin structures are present everywhere in the real world : fibres and veins in biology, stratum interfaces in geology, cracks in industrial control, to give only a few examples. Due to the thinnes of such structures, high resolution images are needed, which in turn requires processing of considerable amount of data by rather complex algorithms. It this talk, we discuss various morphological descriptors to characterize the shape, length, orientation or the organization of the fibers. We have tested the applicability to skin aging known to alter the dermis fibers.