Distance transform

The choice of the term depends on the point of view on the object in question: whether the initial image is transformed into another representation, or it is simply endowed with an additional map or field.

Distance fields can also be signed, in the case where it is important to distinguish whether the point is inside or outside of the shape.

[3] Applications are digital image processing (e.g., blurring effects, skeletonizing), motion planning in robotics, medical-image analysis for prenatal genetic testing, and even pathfinding.

[4] Uniformly-sampled signed distance fields have been used for GPU-accelerated font smoothing, for example by Valve researchers.

Rendering on typical GPU hardware requires conversion to polygon meshes, e.g. by the marching cubes algorithm.