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I have a binary raster containing boundary pixels with the value 1 (white) and no-boundary pixels with the value 0 (black):

enter image description here

I would like to vectorize the raster by keeping one center line trough the boundary pixels. However, most polygonize methods I tried (e.g., gdalogr:polygonize, result in two lines around the outline of the boundary pixels (red lines) or no output (saga:gridskeletonization): enter image description here

Did I miss any method with which this can be easily done? Or do I have to vectorize the raster first to a vector layer containing two parallel lines and find a way from there to skeletonize/centerline the two lines?

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2 Answers 2

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GRASS GIS is able do this.

You need two steps:

  1. r.thin

Thins non-null cells that denote linear features in a raster map layer.

  1. r.to.vect

Converts a raster map into a vector map.

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  • Works for me after setting a nodata value to the raster with gdal_translate -a_nodata.
    – AndreJ
    Commented Aug 8, 2017 at 14:02
  • @RoVo s solution didn't entirely work for me. I was able to start r.thin after converting the binary raster with gdal_translate -ot INT32 src_dataset dst_dataset. It seems that similar conversions are often required before applying r.thin to avoid the error ERROR: Input raster must be of type CELL [see following link] (gis.stackexchange.com/questions/197145/…). However, when running r.to.vect on the raster created with r.thin, GRASS always stops working even when applied to small extents of the raster.
    – Sophie Crommelinck
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 7:30
  • That seems to be a different problem.
    – pLumo
    Commented Sep 14, 2017 at 15:47
  • Now it worked for me as @RoVo suggested. The problem were the no-data values. I changed these not with gdal_translate as @AndreJ suggests, but with mapcalc. I will post my answer containing the modules I used as a separate answer below.
    – Sophie Crommelinck
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 12:23
  • Came here with this issue some time later, having tried various centerline processes - but this GRASS solution worked PERFECTLY - thanks @RoVo
    – AlecZ
    Commented Nov 21, 2017 at 20:14
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Now it worked for me as @RoVo suggested before. The problem were the no-data values in my input raster. I changed these not with gdal_translate as @AndreJ suggests (in comments of answer above), but with GRASS r.mapcalc. Here the modules that I used:

Replace all no data values:

processing.runalg('grass:r.mapcalculator',
                  {"amap": gPb_rlayer,
                   "formula": "if(A>0, 1, null())",
                   "GRASS_REGION_PARAMETER": "%f,%f,%f,%f" % (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax),
                   "GRASS_REGION_CELLSIZE_PARAMETER": 1,
                   "outfile": mapcalc})

Thin raster layer to thin non-null cells:

processing.runalg('grass7:r.thin',
                  {"input": mapcalc,
                   "GRASS_REGION_PARAMETER": "%f,%f,%f,%f" % (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax),
                   "output": thinned})

Raster to vector conversion:

processing.runalg('grass7:r.to.vect',
                  {"input": thinned,
                   "type": 0,
                   "GRASS_OUTPUT_TYPE_PARAMETER": 2,
                   "GRASS_REGION_PARAMETER": "%f,%f,%f,%f" % (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax),
                   "output": centerlines})

enter image description here

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2
  • This worked in QGIS as well, although r.thin took like an hour to complete.
    – ar-siddiqui
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 0:57
  • Thank you so much! This finally worked for me!
    – Ian Moffit
    Commented Jun 10, 2023 at 1:28

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