Abstract: A device for skeletonizing characters imaged on a carrier, according to a two-dimensional regular pattern of positions, said device comprising a detector and storage means associated therewith, said detector feeding information of the characters into said storage means so that the characters are stored as digital information of character positions and background positions, respectively; skeletonizng means for receiving and changing information of character positions into those of background positions until the information of character positions have been reduced to information of character positions of skeleton characters whose stroke elements consist of a single series of character positions which succeed each other in accordance with an adjacency criterion, said skeletonizing means comprising a control unit associated with said storage means for controlling skeletonizing of said characters in cycles, said control unit operative in two modes, a first mode having at least one cycle and a second mode having at

Abstract: Characters are skeletonized to form skeleton characters consisting of single series of character positions. A skeletonizing cycle consists of one mark scanning operation, followed by two peeling scanning operations. The criteria for marking and peeling can be better adapted to each other in this manner. Skeletonizing, thus, is rendered substantially independent of the sequence in which the character positions are treated, so that notably the symmetry of the character elements remains the same. Moreover, the occurrence of random tails can be avoided to a substantial degree.